


Oneshot Collection

by orphan_account



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Basically a collection of all my oneshots, F/F, F/M, M/M, Warnings at the top of each chapter, and drabbles, from tumblr prompts and stuff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-02
Updated: 2019-08-23
Packaged: 2020-04-06 07:39:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 42
Words: 33,489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19058194
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: A collection of oneshots and drabbles from tumblr!





	1. Golden Feathers, Rotting Flesh

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Español available: [Oneshot Collection [Traducción]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19095655) by [Personaje](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Personaje/pseuds/Personaje)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After the war, nobody looks at them the same way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Draco, Harry, and magical creatures
> 
> (Pairing: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter)

_Harry_  is a hippogriff. A revered and majestic beast, with golden feathers that ripple and glisten in the light. He is danger and power and untouchable.

That’s what it feels like now, with the Prophet headlines screaming about “The Golden Boy,” on every available page. The people in echo response, and whispers of  _savior_  fill the unusually empty corridors. He’s the war hero, the poster boy, the traumatized soul who has been through hell and more.

They approach him tenderly, terrified of what he’ll do if they say the wrong thing. They bow down before him, waiting for him to respond. When he doesn’t, they run away, still bowing low.

Because he is a hippogriff. He is a creature of respect. People know that of him, and they think saying the wrong thing will bypass his fragile temperament and make him attack.

So they tiptoe, they bow, they whisper, and they run, all the while murmuring to each other about his beautiful golden feathers.

Because he is a hippogriff, he is the Golden Boy, and he is danger and power and untouchable. 

 _Malfoy_  is a thestral. A mangled corpse, dripping with rotted flesh and jagged bones, with bruised eyes sunken deep into his partly-visible skull. He is danger and power and death.

Some people pretend he isn't there. Those who don’t see the blood on his hands, those who haven’t seen the death he caused - they walk right by. They look through him, unseeing, ignoring his path and his words and his existence. He isn’t real, in their view. They can’t see him.

But then there are those who have seen all too well, whose eyes still shine with the memories of death that are burned into their retinas, playing them over and over on unending repeat. They see his disgusting twisted mind and rotting skin. They think he’s abnormal and wrong, so they throw hexes and curses, hissing jubilantly when they land their strike.

Because he is a thestral. He is a creature of horror, a harbinger of death. He is unseen and hated, feared and reviled.

So they curse and hex and blame, because who better to blame than the symbol of death himself? They mutter angrily about his jagged bones, sticking out at odd angles.

Because he is a thestral, he is the Death Eater, and he is danger and power and death.

That was them. The two beasts, the misunderstood creatures of the forest. Nobody really saw  _them_ , until they saw each other. Then, things were different.

Because Malfoy had never been afraid to approach a hippogriff. Malfoy walked up to him with a confident, sneering swagger, throwing careless words in his face and shooting insults like spells. Harry didn’t care what the words were. All he cared about was that Malfoy wasn’t choosing them carefully.

And at first, Harry fought back. He fought back, because he was used to being the hippogriff, and he was used to being handled with care, and it felt  _good_  to be able to strike back. If they were going to treat him like a hippogriff, then he would damn well be one.

When Malfoy’s insults lost their sting, though, Harry realized that he didn’t have to be what they saw. He wasn’t a hippogriff. He didn’t have golden feathers. He was just himself.

So he stopped fighting, and he  _looked._ Malfoy wasn’t invisible to him. No,he could see Malfoy after the hundreds of deaths that were still smeared across both their consciences. He saw the way people balked and ran in fear at the sight of him or attacked him with equal spite.

But Harry wasn’t afraid like they were. Why would he be afraid of death, when he himself had died and returned? He knew that the peeling skin was nothing to fear. It was merely an inevitability that would come with time.

So Malfoy didn’t treat him like a fragile piece of glass, and Harry didn’t run or curse at the sight of white-blond hair.

It was a breath of fresh air. No, it was more than that. It was learning how to breathe at the bottom of an ocean, because you had finally,  _finally_ , found the pocket of air. It was not being able to survive, and then  _being_ able to survive. It was finding someone who didn’t care how you chose to live, only that you did.

And it was messed up. They were too different, too opposing, too much of the same people they had been before.

But they could also see each other. When they were together, they were no longer the hippogriff and the thestral, the Golden Boy and the Death Eater. When they were together, they were just people who had been forced into skins that they never asked to wear.

When they were together, they were themselves. They were  _okay._

And for now, that was more than enough.

 


	2. Stars and Scars

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Remus is desperate to understand why Sirius can never look at his scars.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the first time I've tried writing Wolfstar, so I'm not sure how it was, but oh well!
> 
> (Pairing: Sirius Black/Remus Lupin)

It was hard for Sirius to look at the scars that littered Remus’s body, as frequently scattered as the freckles sprinkled over Lily’s skin. Remus noticed it, because Sirius’s eyes would skitter across his arms before darting away quickly, as though magnetically repelled.

He was used to it, of course, because it was a common reaction. The burning stares that almost seemed to set his marks on fire, the eyes flicking here and there when people thought Remus wasn’t looking.  Remus had thick skin, though. No matter the amount of times he had ripped it off himself in the middle of the full moon, the looks of disgust could never get through. He couldn’t let them, because if he did, he would go insane. It was a simple matter of self-preservation.

Sirius, on the other hand. Sirius’s careful avoidance and looks of horror were almost as deadly as Remus’s own claws. Sirius had the ability to tear him apart and piece him back together, to scar him and then make it look as though nothing had happened.

It wasn’t that he blamed Sirius. No, he would be disgusted too if he had to stare at himself all day. He was a monster, after all, no matter how often they denied it. Sirius's apprehensive glances  were so, so different than the looks everyone else gave him. This was his own best friend who could hardly bear to look at his body. Even after years, even after seeing him  _transform,_ he was just as wary as ever.

It wasn’t just the scars, either. In the days after the full moon, Sirius was eerily reticent. He tried not to show it. Throwing blankets over Remus and tending to his wounds, whispering words of comfort long into the night  —  to anybody else, Sirius would appear completely unfazed.

But Remus wasn’t just anybody else. Remus  _knew_ Sirius, knew him right down to his core, and he could see how troubled Sirius was in the days around the full moon. He noticed it when Sirius squeezed his eyes shut and kept his distance.

Remus should be grateful, and of course he was. He was  _endlessly_  grateful for their support, for their lavish and slightly excessive care. It was a sore wound, though, the way Sirius looked at him.

A sore wound that was magnified by Remus’s feelings.

The deadly feelings. The ones that he tried to repress just as much as he fought against his condition. It was just a cherry on top of the cake, the perfect addition to his already messed up life, because not only was he a werewolf, but he (loved? liked?)  his best friend.

He thought he could deal with Sirius’s disguised discomfort, he really did. But then there was one especially bad night, when he scratched four huge gashes across his face and Sirius looked at him like the stars were caving in.

“Look, I’m sorry, okay?” Remus snapped, turning his face equally harshly. He could feel his cheeks falling into the scarlet ground-state that always gave away his shame. “You think I asked for this? I hate it as much as you.”

“What?” Sirius asked. It was as though he genuinely had no idea what Remus was talking about. “What do you mean, ‘ _I hate it as much as you?'”_

“Look, Sirius, don’t pretend. I see the way you look at me.” This wasn’t how Remus had planned for the conversation to go at all. When he envisioned it earlier, he was confident — unflappable and unconcerned. But now he could hear his voice breaking apart and he didn’t know what to do about it.

“Remus Lupin. Look at me.” Remus didn’t turn around. “Remus.” When he still didn’t move, Sirius walked around so that they were standing right in front of each other, and the air felt ten times thicker. Not in a good way, not with the usual burst of secret adrenaline. This time, it was just  _heavy._

“It’s fine,” Remus croaked, almost laughing at how pathetic he sounded. Just one more thing to add to his list. “Drop it.”

“You think I hate you because you’re a werewolf?” Sirius asked, and if Remus didn’t know better, he would’ve almost believed that Sirius had no idea what he meant.

“No, I know you don’t hate  _me._ But you can barely even look at — well, you know.” He gestured to the marks scratched across his face, because at the moment he didn’t trust his voice enough to say  _scars._

“You thought —? Merlin. Fuck, Remus, how long have you thought I hated that you’re a werewolf?”

It was just too much, all at once. Usually Remus planned out what to say in conversations, went over a million different scenarios so that he wouldn’t be caught off guard in times like this.

“Always, I guess,” he admitted, resolutely ignoring the hot sting in his eyes. He looked up at the ceiling to hold the tears in, because he wouldn’t let them fall. He couldn’t. Not now.

Sirius sat down heavily on the bed, rubbing a tired hand across his face.

“Merlin. Remus, you have it wrong it so many ways that I can’t even count.”

“Then what is it?” Remus wasn’t sure where the defensive flare came from, but maybe it was because one tear had slipped from his eyes and was trailing down his skin. He had to make up for that moment of weakness. “Why do you always look away and get all withdrawn around the full moon? You’re not even the one who has to transform!”

“Yeah, but I have to watch you! I watch you tear yourself into shreds, I watch you curl up in bed and sob when you think nobody can see you. You’re hurt, every single month of every fucking year, and there’s nothing I can do. Do you have any idea —” Sirius cut himself off, and his hand was clenched tight in the sheets with some raging emotion that Sirius himself barely understood.

Remus sat down on the bed next to him, not even noticing where their legs brushed together because his mind was working too fast in an effort to keep up.

“I’m sorry,” Sirius muttered. “You’re right, it isn’t about me. It’s just fucking impossible to watch the pain you have to go through. All I want to do is take it away. I hate looking at your scars because… because it reminds me how helpless I am, and how strong you have to be, and how you just don’t have a choice.”

Even Remus’s tears seemed to freeze on his face, like they sensed that this was too important. “You don’t hate it?” Remus asked, and he cursed how small his voice sounded. He cleared his throat and tried again. “You don’t hate that I’m a werewolf?”

“For Godric’s sake, Moony, no! I hate that you have to deal with this pain.”

Remus was quiet for a long moment while he tried to collect himself, but Sirius didn’t even seem to notice. He just kept twisting his hand absentmindedly in the sheet and looking in the opposite direction.

“I’m sorry I got mad at you. I guess I just misinterpreted it, because James and Peter never seemed to be bothered by it at all.”

“Yeah, well, they aren’t bloody in love with you, are they?” Sirius barked out bitterly.

Time froze. Time froze entirely. Or maybe time kept spinning and everything else just froze, because Sirius wasn’t moving a muscle and neither was Remus, and they were both just sitting there like they had both completely lost their ability to do anything at all.

“Fuck,” Sirius breathed out after a tense minute, and Remus could barely hear it over the blood pounding in his skull. Maybe he was having a heart attack. It wasn’t completely out of the question. “Fuck, Remus, I was — I was just joking, I didn't mean...”

Sirius stood up from the bed then, giving Remus a weak smile and backing away. He bumped straight into the bedpost behind him, but didn’t even wince. “I’ll just go.”

“Don’t you dare leave,” Remus said suddenly. He wasn’t even sure how he'd mustered the voice to speak, only that it was the most confident he'd sounded all night long. “What did you say?”

Sirius seemed to melt before him, dropping onto his own bed and pulling his knees tight to his chest like a shield.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to mess things up, but I… I…I couldn’t help it. You’re just so bloody perfect, and, and I fucking love you too much and —”

“I like you too,” Remus said it louder than he had intended, cutting right over Sirius’s panicked explanation. He winced at the way the words came out, but maybe it was for the best. If he hadn’t, he would have lost his nerve for certain. His heart seemed to be going into overdrive, and Remus was genuinely concerned now, because he could feel it pressing against his chest like it was going to break out any second and flop across the floor.

“You mean…?”

“I like you. As in — as in, like you. Like, more than a friend.” Remus could feel his stomach clench at the words. Even though Sirius had just said as much, what if he had  _somehow_ misinterpreted it, and Sirius didn't really like him at all?

But there was a hesitant smile on Sirius’s face now, slow, but steadily lighting up his eyes in the way it always did. And then Sirius was standing up and so was Remus, and they met each other halfway between the two beds.

They didn't kiss, and it wasn't flawless or perfect or eye-opening. They just hugged, awkwardly, as though they had no idea where their limbs were supposed to go. And then Remus was crying, and Sirius was laughing, and it was such an odd mix of sounds that they both started laughing and crying at the same time, leaning against each other like they were the only things left in the world.

It was the first time Remus could remember that he didn’t care about the tear tracks running down his face, or the long scars that rippled over his skin.

“I could never hate you for these,” Sirius murmured, extricating himself gently so that he could run a finger over the scar on Remus’s cheekbone. “I couldn't. I’ve never hated you for it, and I never will, you got that?”

“Yeah,” Remus said, and Sirius could feel him smile under his fingertips. “Yeah, I think I got it.”


	3. Slightly Too Much Spice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry's just making lunch, until suddenly it's so much more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Drarry + curry
> 
> (Pairing: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter)

It was a typical Friday afternoon, but everything seemed just slightly brighter than usual. Maybe it was because Harry had spent the majority of the previous week stripping down Grimmauld Place and wiping grime from the windows, so there was now a warm strip of light falling across the kitchen.

Harry hummed absently as he stood in front of the stove. It was a song that he couldn’t quite place, something he must have heard a long time ago, or maybe it was a combination of songs. He was stirring absentmindedly to the tune, not even looking at what he was making, because he was too busy reveling in the warmth of the sun.

“Sir should not be cooking,” came a grumbling voice from beside him. Kreacher had sidled into the kitchen, fixing Harry with a glare. Harry just grinned back at him good-naturedly, which seemed to make Kreacher's scowl deepen. Harry had long since given up disputing that his name wasn't Sir, but he would never give up his place in the kitchen.

When Harry refused to move, Kreacher muttered something under his breath that sounded suspiciously passive aggressive before asking, “Is Miss Granger being here tonight?”

“Yeah,” Harry said happily, another wave of warmth flowing through him, and the sun seemed to brighten in response. “She’s coming for lunch while Ron stays home with Rosie.”

“Kreacher is cleaning the sitting room,” Kreacher said in an annoyed voice, slouching out of the room, and Harry laughed. The sitting room would doubtless be rearranged entirely when he came back. Kreacher seemed to have developed a knack for redecorating. Harry just kept humming the same mindless tune, happily tossing random spices into the pot without casting a second thought towards when he was cooking.

He must have been completely lost in his mind as he cheerfully ladled out some of his mixture onto a plate, because somehow he didn’t realize. He didn’t realize what he had made until he looked down at the plate and saw what it was.

And then the plate was slipping between his fingers, which had gone entirely numb, and it was crashing against the floor with a jarring noise that Harry didn’t even hear. He had stopped hearing entirely.

It was curry. Curry, mixed with shards of ceramic, splattered over the newly-cleaned tiles, staining the floor a dusky orange.

How hadn’t he noticed, as he picked up the same spices he had used a million times, measured out the same weird amounts? Because he had made it exactly the way Malfoy always liked it. It was  _Malfoy's_ curry, the kind Harry knew he loved no matter how much he might have complained. Slightly too much spice. Malfoy would never let on how much he craved that curry, but Harry could tell by the light in his eyes and the way his mouth reluctantly ticked up at the corners.

Harry vaguely realized his foot was stinging, and he looked down with a detached sort of interest at the scrape running across his toe, an offending piece of fallen ceramic settled innocently beside it.

It didn’t matter. None of it did. The light was too bright now, and Harry wished he had never cleaned Grimmauld Place. It seemed that no matter how much time Harry spent trying to wipe Malfoy from the walls and the carpets and the rooms, he stayed. Stained into the smallest of things.

“Oh, Harry.” He hadn’t noticed her come in, but Hermione’s voice was sad and sweet and gentle, and she didn’t even bother to try hiding it as she lead Harry over to the couch. Kreacher had moved it into a corner, right beside an old mirror that he hadn’t been able to remove. Malfoy always looked in that mirror. He would triple-check his hair every time before they went out.

“I miss him,” Harry choked out, hating how completely helpless he felt, and there was still blood and curry splattered across his foot. “I miss him so much.”

“I know,” Hermione whispered. She rubbed small circles into his back before pulling him close. He buried his head in her shoulder, welcoming the comforting vanilla of her perfume, even though he hated vanilla. He leaned back into the consistent press of her hand against his skin. It was impossible not to think about it, about how light Hermione’s touch was compared to  _his,_ and Harry found himself longing for Malfoy's sarcastic remarks that were dulled by his long fingers carding through Harry's hair.

He could still smell the curry from where it had been simmering on the stove. Slightly too spicy, the kind that made Malfoy’s eyes crinkle at the corners and made him laugh just a little louder.

It was a typical Friday afternoon, because once again, Harry was falling apart.


	4. Merry Christmas

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Draco thinks he's found the perfect gift for Harry. After all, who doesn't love dogs?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Drarry + Christmas + pet
> 
> (Pairing: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter)

Draco smiled to himself as he carefully tugged the dog towards the tree, the impossibly soft black fur blending in with the night time chill. It was snowing outside, the kind of snow that sent huge fluffy flakes spiraling all across the lawn. All in all, it was chalking up to be the best Christmas Draco had ever experienced, although that wasn’t saying much.

Not when his previous Christmases had consisted mostly of his father telling him that he didn’t deserve presents. Not when he was second to a  _Mudblood_  in school, or when he couldn’t even beat Harry Potter in quidditch.

Draco was determined to make up for it, to scratch over all the tainted memories of red and green, of good and bad. And he had the perfect idea.

Harry had been dropping not-so-subtle hints that he wanted a dog, and Draco had brushed it off every time with a snort and a roll of his eyes. “Yeah, right. Fur everywhere? I don’t think so.” But the idea had taken root in his mind, and he couldn’t quite get it out, no matter how hard he pushed.

And once it was there, it wasn’t going anywhere. Draco was hesitant at first, not sure if Harry really wanted a dog, or if he was joking, so he casually brought it up in conversation.

“What would you say if we got a dog?” he asked nonchalantly one day, pointedly not making eye contact.

“ _Yeah_ ,” Harry said, and there was a hopeful shine in his eyes. Draco pretended it didn’t affect him, but in truth it would be stuck in his head for days after. “Why, have you finally changed your mind?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Draco laughed, and Harry just rolled his eyes. His shoulders slumped slightly, and it made Draco want to go over and wrap him up in his arms until that little wrinkle fell right off his forehead.

So now here he was, sticking a little bow to the top of the dog’s head and murmuring softly to it. He would have imagined talking to a dog would make him feel stupid, but somehow the way it looked back at him made Draco’s heart melt just a tiny bit. Not that he would ever admit that, of course.

“Stay here, okay?” Draco whispered, before laughing at himself and shaking his head as he walked quietly back up the stairs. There were photos covering the walls — Harry spinning in the leaves, Draco cooking pancakes, the two of them sitting together.

The dog let out a tiny little, “Yip!” and Draco looked back crossly at it. “Shhhh!” he hissed. The things he did for Harry.

The next morning, he awoke to Harry insistently poking his face. Not the most pleasant of situations, but considering the circumstances he could overlook it.

“Get off me, you wanker,” Draco grumbled, but sat up sleepily as he rubbed his eyes. “What time is it?”

“Five!” Harry said excitedly, and the sound echoed through Draco’s sensitive skull like a foghorn. He clapped his hands over his ears just in time to muffle Harry’s amused laugh. “Come  _on!”_ Harry grabbed his arm, and tugged Draco out into the hallway, ignoring his squeal of protest.

When they reached the sitting room, Harry stopped dead.

Draco wasn’t sure what he had expected. Maybe for Harry to laugh or thank him or hug him, or — or  _anything_ really. Anything but turn around and look at Draco with a panicked and haunted look on his eyes and then  _run._

_Shit._ Draco was panicking too now.  _Shit shit shit shit shit._ What had happened? Harry said he wanted a dog, right? Maybe the dog was hurt, Draco thought frantically, grasping at any possible explanation for Harry’s disappearance, but no.

The dog was just sitting under the tree, thumping his tail happily against the ground. The bow on his head had slipped slightly during the night, resting awkwardly against one ear.

“Harry!” Draco called, looking quickly in every room as he made his way down the hall. “Harry, where are you?”

Draco found him on the porch. His head was bowed, pressing against the railing that overlooked the garden. Draco knew it must hurt. Their porch was uneven and messy, and it always gave him splinters.

“Harry?”

“Please just go away,” Harry whispered, and his voice was choked in the way that it always was when he was trying to pretend everything was okay.

“Harry, I’m not going away. What’s wrong?”

Harry shook his head, and Draco winced as it rubbed against the wood. He walked over so they were standing side by side, and gently, carefully, he laid a hand on Harry’s arm.

“Come back inside with me, okay? We can talk about it there. It’s not so cold inside.”

Harry straightened up mutely, but his shoulders were still hunched in front of him like he was trying to shield himself from the world. He was crying. Draco realized this with a shock, staring at the silent tears that were pouring down his cheeks and reflecting the brightness of the snow in all directions. His eyes were blown wide, scared in a way that usually only appeared at night.

_What had he done?_

“I can’t,” Harry said, in the same tight whisper, “I can’t go back in there.”

“Is it the dog?”

Harry didn’t answer, but his stance grew even tenser than Draco thought was possible, and he seemed to shutter over in a way that Draco had never seen. His lips were pressed tight together in a hard line.

“Harry, you have to talk to me.”

“It looks like — it looks like him,” Harry was speaking so quietly now that it barely qualified as a whisper anymore, but somehow Draco realized what was wrong before he even said a word.

“I’m sorry, Draco, I just can’t. I can’t do this to you right now. You’re so sweet and you got me the most wonderful gift but I’m just too messed up and I can’t even appreciate it and… fuck, you deserve more than me.”

“Harry Potter, don’t you dare,” Draco said, narrowing his eyes in what he hoped didn’t come across angrily. “I was a  _Death Eater._ Don’t say that I deserve more than you.”

“Yeah, you were a Death Eater, and you’re perfectly normal now! And here I am, not even able to look at that dog without falling apart and — and — I should go.”

“Harry —” Draco began, a whole speech already flowing through his head, but Harry was  _gone._ He had spun on his heel and just vanished, without another word.

_Fuck._

Draco somehow managed to walk back inside despite his leaden legs, and he collapsed next to the dog-that-looked-like-Sirius, running his fingers quietly through the silky fur. The dog just looked up at him with big black eyes, swishing his tail happily and letting out another “Yip!”

Draco sat there for so long that his feet fell asleep, waiting and waiting for Harry to come back so that they could both apologize and talk.

But Harry never came. Draco just sat there next to the little dog, and did his best to comfort himself with the thought that this was still the best Christmas he’d ever had.

It wasn’t much comfort.

 


	5. Forgotten Words

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Remus finds words that have long been lost

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: wolfstar + leather + letter
> 
> (Pairing: Sirius Black/Remus Lupin)

The leather hugged his arms, too tight, like it was determined to suffocate every inch of his skin.

It didn’t even smell like Sirius anymore. No, all that was left was the musty tang of Grimmauld Place, reeking of mold instead of the familiar motorcycle oil that he had come to love. But maybe it did smell like Sirius, because Grimmauld Place had defined Sirius in his last days.

Remus had been trying so hard not to think about it. He’d stayed completely away from the house, avoiding it in favor of doing other missions for the Aurors, or going home with random people just to scrub Sirius out of his mind. And yet, here he was, pathetically clinging on to this last reminder of him. Leather. Sirius.  _Leather. Sirius._

A shiver passed through him, one that probably had nothing to do with the cold, but he slipped his hands into his pockets nonetheless, the pockets that Sirius had put his hands in hundreds of times. His fingers brushed against something as they slid into the pocket, and he froze. It was soft and square, pointy around the edges.

He pulled it out. His fingers were fumbling, in the way you don’t have complete control over them on a freezing day, numb and unforgiving.

It was a piece of paper.

The problem was, it could be anything. An old receipt, a scrap of an idea, a crumpled piece of homework that had been sitting there since Hogwarts, empty parchment. He didn’t want to hope, and he didn’t want his hope to be crushed, so he tried to push down all his feelings into the pit that had been eaten into his stomach during the years of grief and hate. It was easier to think when he didn’t have to feel.

He unfolded it, hands still trembling against his will. Now he could see writing through the thinning parchment, ink scrawling across in the untidy handwriting that was designed for speed, not accuracy. Sirius’s handwriting.

Before he could talk himself out of it, he flipped over the paper, worried that it would disintegrate in his hands.

 _Moony,_ it began.

Remus looked away. This wasn’t helping him move on, and if he kept reading, it would probably make things worse. He had to come to terms with Sirius’s death.  _This won’t help,_ he told himself.

He’d never been good at listening to his own thoughts, though.

He had to know.

He kept reading.

_Moony,_

_I have a secret to tell you._

_I never told you because I was too afraid. Pathetic, isn’t it? I’m a Gryffindor, I was never afraid to pull pranks, I was in Azkaban for 13 years, and my mum was a menace._

_But I was too scared to tell you how I felt._ _Do you know how terrifying it is for me to even write this?_

_I love you._

_I’ve never told you, because I didn’t want to mess up our friendship._ _So now I’m writing this all out in a letter because apparently I’m still a bloody coward. I love you and I have to tell you, because the war is blowing everything apart, and if I die without you knowing I’ll never forgive myself._

There were crossed out lines now, skittering across the page like Remus’s scars, fierce blots that had almost ripped a hole in the parchment. When the words started back up again, they were noticeably messier. Angrier.

_Who am I kidding. I can’t tell you. After all this, I’m still a fucking coward. Maybe Snivellus was right._

_I love you Remus, even though you’ll never see this. I didn’t think I was capable of love, but then I met you. Thank you for proving me wrong._

_\- Padfoot._

Remus couldn’t hear anything. Not even his heartbeat. Wasn’t he supposed to hear it, with his heart practically pounding out of his chest? He’d always been able to hear it, steadily growing in volume as the full moon drew closer. He hated it then, longed for the blissful silence where he didn’t have the constant reminder of his existence, for a moment of peace.

But it wasn’t blissful now. Now he reached for the torturous sound, desired more than anything, if only to fill up the gaping hole that had spread from the depths of his chest all the way up to his mind.

He took back what he’d said earlier, because now the leather jacket smelled exactly like Sirius. It smelled entirely too much like Sirius, and he could pick out the distinct cologne and he could see the tiny dog hairs, and all of a sudden it  _was_  Sirius. Everything was Sirius.

Sirius, standing in front of him, saying, “I love you.” Except he’d never said it, and was nothing more than a ghost. Nothing more than words on a crumbling piece of paper.

Nothing more than an empty phrase a year too late, words in fading ink that was still far too black and far too real.

Remus sat down and curled up and sobbed for the first time in years, because it was the only thing he could think to do. He threw the paper across the room, but it didn’t matter. The words were forever scorched into his mind. Another scar to add to the list, the ever-growing one that defined his very existence.

His brain wasn’t quiet anymore, either. It was an endless loop of Sirius’s voice, because he could hear Sirius saying it like he was right there in the room.

_I love you. If I die without you knowing, I’ll never forgive myself._

And yet, he was dead.


	6. You Seemed Tense

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When Malfoy is assigned as Harry's potions tutor, he doesn't think he'll be able to stand it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Drarry + a class among c) Potions + a) tutoring/helping
> 
> (Pairing: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter)

“No!” Harry insisted vehemently, and he was shaking his head so hard that he thought it was going to fall off. Maybe this is what Nearly-Headless Nick had felt like. “I’m not going to have  _Malfoy_ tutor me in potions!”

“Mr. Potter, although your objections are understandable—” Headmistress McGonagall began, and Harry opened his mouth to cut in. He barely got a word out before she silenced him with one long glare.

“As I was saying. Although I understand your reservations, you really don’t have a choice. Your professor’s policy clearly outlines the rules. You need to raise your grades, and he is assigning you a tutor.”

“Okay, but why  _Malfoy?”_ Harry spluttered, and no matter how many times McGonagall said she understood, he was sure she didn’t. “Hermione can tutor me!”

McGonagall pursed her lips. “We’ve been over this, Mr. Potter. The terms of Mr. Malfoy’s parole designate him to duties such as student tutor. As such, it will fulfill both your needs.”

“Headmistress,” Harry began, fully prepared to use his status as  _Harry Potter_  and bribe her if that’s what it came down to.

“Not another word,” she frowned at him. “You’re eighteen and you’ve just fought in a war. Surely you can muster up enough maturity to simply co-exist with another student?”

Harry sighed, and he would have protested further if not for McGonagall’s weary look. And maybe because Dumbledore’s portrait was staring sternly down at him from the wall.

“Fine, Headmistress.” It didn’t mean he had to be happy about it.

“Good,” she said briskly. Then her face softened slightly, and she glanced at the door almost instinctively before turning her full attention back to Harry. “I know it isn’t easy. But keep in mind that it’s hard for both of you.”

“Right,” Harry said dubiously. He didn’t want to think about Malfoy right now, or to unsort the complicated emotions. All he had to do was learn potions, not be friends with the git.

So that’s exactly what he did.

“Potter,” Malfoy said briskly when Harry pushed his way into the potion’s classroom. Harry didn’t say anything, just stalked inside, not caring that there was a long trail of mud behind him.

“What happened to you?” Malfoy asked, taken aback by Harry’s disheveled state.

“None of your bloody business,” Harry grumbled, looking away. There was a huge bruise forming on his cheekbone and another on his shoulder, the result of quidditch practice gone wrong.

Malfoy frowned. “Fine. Let’s get this over with then.”

For the next hour, they brewed and chopped in near silence, deciding that talking would probably goad them into something less than friendly. It was tense but bearable, and Harry poured all his energy into measuring out ingredients and decidedly ignoring Malfoy.

When they put in the last of the chopped newt’s tail and set it to boil, Malfoy smiled in a satisfied way. “As unbelievable as it may seem, you’ve managed to correctly brew a potion.” The sickly yellow paste in the cauldron did indeed resemble the picture, but Harry didn’t much care.

“Brilliant. We’re done,” he said grumpily, swinging his bag over his shoulder and wincing at the bruise blooming under his skin. “I’m going now.”

“Potter.”

“What?”

“It’s a healing salve. Put it on the bruise, and it should heal within the hour.”

Harry stared at him, baffled. “What?”

Malfoy glared at him. “It’s a healing potion. Now shut up and leave.”

When Harry glanced back at the instructions on the page, he saw that Malfoy was telling the truth. He looked at Malfoy long and hard, trying to understand, before finally scooping up a flask of the potion and sweeping out of the room.

The next time when Harry walked in, he was jittering with anxiety. He’d failed yet another Transfiguration assignment, and was yet to face McGonagall’s wrath. The entire time they were brewing Harry couldn’t stop bouncing his knee, shakily chopping up roots and leaves, trying not to let his nerves cloud his conversation. Finally at the end, Malfoy scooped some of the potion into a vial and handed it to Harry, the same incomprehensible look on his face.

“It’s a calming draught,” he said simply.

“But — why?” Harry asked, furrowing his brow. “Why are you doing this?”

Malfoy merely shrugged, the corner of his mouth ticking upwards into a smile. Not a sneer, but a smile. “You seemed tense.”

Harry shook his head in disbelief, still trying to search Malfoy for ulterior motives, before he finally grabbed the vial. “Thanks.”

The next time, Harry was sick. His nose wouldn’t stop running, it felt like there was something inside of him scratching his throat open, and his head was pounding something fierce.

Harry had a sneaking suspicion that he knew what the potion would be, but when Malfoy nudged the cauldron towards him he still managed to be surprised.

“It’ll bring your fever down,” Malfoy told him, shaking his head slightly.

“Why are you doing this? Why do you care?”

Malfoy rolled his eyes and waved his hand like it was nothing. “Don’t get too full of yourself, Potter. I’m bored, and you can’t take care of yourself. Someone has to.”

Harry smiled at him, the first actual smile that he’d allowed himself to show around Malfoy.

Maybe this would be okay after all.


	7. Gagged

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Marauders get detention, and Remus is left to transform on his own.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: I always need to be gagged
> 
> (Pairing: Sirius Black/Remus Lupin)

_“_ We’ll sneak out,” Sirius insisted, fists clenched so tight that he was surprised the bones hadn’t snapped yet.

“No,” Remus said resolutely. “You’ll get expelled, McGonagall warned you. You’re not getting expelled for my sake.”

James stepped in, angry, strong. “We won’t be expelled. We’ll use polyjuice or something, we can figure it out, it —”

“No,” Their voices were all equally hard, but Remus’s eyes were wolfish and burning. “I’ll be fine, okay?” They were standing in the Shrieking Shack, the full moon dangerously bright, a lighthouse-like warning cutting through the grime.

“No, we’ll —”

“Look, I’ve done this before. Before you were animagi. It’s going to be  _fine_.”

Sirius looked at Remus, angry but not angry at  _him_ , and Remus stared back the same way, not willing to yield.

“It’s almost time,” Peter said nervously, glancing up at the moon, the one that told time better than any clock. “We don’t want to stay much longer, or… well —”

He glanced at Remus, and they all knew what he’d been going to say.  _We don’t want to be here as humans when he transforms._

“Fine,” Sirius said finally, throwing up his hands in surrender. “Fine. But never again, understand? If something happens —”

“Nothing’s going to happen. If you want to make it easier, tie me down. When I’m alone, **I always need to be gagged**  and tied up. It makes it harder to hurt myself.”

Sirius closed his eyes so tightly that colored spots swam in his vision, but he did what Remus said. He pulled out his wand with a muttered  _incarcerous,_ surprised the spell still worked when his hands were shaking worse than ever.

It was harder than watching the transformation, because now he was forced to  stand there and watch Remus lie on the floor in a crumpled ball of rope, knowing he was about to  _leave_.

“Be safe,” Sirius whispered before James dragged him out of the room.

They walked to detention in complete silence. Even when they got there, there was a silent agreement that they couldn’t talk. No jokes could distract them now. Nothing could.

Sirius lasted about ten minutes before he broke.

He ignored Peter’s worried noise and James’s cry of protest as he sprinted out of the classroom. He didn’t care, because the only thing he could think about was Remus. Remus, tied up, facing the full moon alone because of a bloody detention, gagged and bound and  _alone._

He ran to the shack, transforming into a dog mid-run, and not caring about anything but Remus. Remus, Remus, Remus, in time with his footsteps, his heartbeats, his spinning mind.  _Remus._

The night passed in a blur of howls and colors, of darkness encroaching on their every movement, of fear and exhilaration and running and distracting and living and  _keeping Remus safe._

As a dog, he didn’t worry about the consequences. He could ignore it — he could be there for Remus, he could lead him back to the Shrieking Shack as the night waned, and he could wait for Remus to shrink, skin red and stretched, exhausted and marred.

Even when Sirius turned back into a person, he didn’t care about the consequences. He focused on helping Remus to the hospital wing, balancing out his hobble and trying to convince Remus that walking on his own was a bad idea. Remus was always stubbornly insistent that he didn’t need help.

It wasn’t until they rounded the corner and came face to face with Professor McGonagall that Sirius remembered McGonagall’s words from before.  _Skip another detention, Black, and you’re out of the school. Understand?_  Remus’s eyes were wide, his grip on Sirius’s shoulder pushing into the flesh.

“Professor —”

“I didn’t —”

“It was my fault, he was helping —”

She just held up a single hand, forestalling their wave of hurried excuses.

“I’m not going to expel you,” she said, frowning at Sirius. “I don’t know what you were doing, Mr. Black, but nobody showed up this morning with their hair turned red and gold, so I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt.”

Something told Sirius that she knew more than she was letting on, but it didn’t matter. She walked away briskly, feet clicking against the stone, and Remus turned furiously back to Sirius, relief warring with worry and exhaustion.

“You weren’t supposed to come,” he whispered, pulling Sirius into a hug so tight that it felt like their bodies had melded into one. “Not on your own. Something could’ve happened.”

“I couldn’t leave you,” Sirius murmured back against Remus’s hair. “I couldn’t. I’ll never leave you.”

They stood there for a long time, Remus pushing past the energy that had probably completely drained from his limbs at this time, only pulling Sirius closer.

“I’ll never leave you,” Sirius whispered again, breathing in Remus’s scent and wishing it wasn’t tinged with the coppery smell of blood. “I’ll never leave you.”

He never had, and he never would.


	8. Only For a Minute

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Remus gets taken hostage, and there's only one person who can help.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: "Oh, do that again! I like it!"
> 
> (Pairing: Sirius Black/Remus Lupin)

“Please, don’t stop,” Remus snarled, a sneer twisting his lips in time with his arm twisting behind his back. He could feel the skin stretching, pulled taut over muscle and bone, but he didn’t even flinch. He’d had his skin torn apart and bones ground to shreds too many times to count, and this was a mere scratch in comparison. “This is extremely enjoyable.”

He knew he should stop talking, but he relished the infuriated snarl he could hear from Bellatrix, the increase of pressure against his skin. He wanted to rile them up. To show them he wasn’t someone to be trifled with.

“Silencio!” Bellatrix cried sharply, but Remus hadn’t perfected a silent and wandless shield charm for nothing.

“Nice try!” He told her as the spell reverberated off his shield, and then he laughed again, ugly and somehow sarcastic. “I’m sure you’ll get the hang of it someday.”

“I’ll kill you,” Bellatrix whispered. “I’ll torture you until you convince the werewolves in hiding to join our cause.”

Remus just laughed.

“Torture me all you want,  _Bella._ I love being tortured. I enjoy receiving pain as much as you enjoy giving it.”

It was a complete and utter lie, of course, but Remus was notorious for bluffing his way through things. He was so bone weary of pain that he would give anything to desensitize all his nerve endings to the point where he couldn’t feel. But Bellatrix didn’t have to know that.

“No you don’t,” she hissed, twisting his arm tighter. “Crucio!”

Remus choked back a cry, instead biting out the words, **“Oh, do that again! I like it!”**

He could take this. He could fake it. He’d done it before and he’d do it again. It was only pain.

Finally, his abnormal tolerance for torture was coming in handy.

Bellatrix raised her wand again, fist clenched tight, twisting his arm harder, but then the door burst open in a haze of fury and pounding footsteps.

Remus took advantage, diving away from Bellatrix and joining in the tangle of spells that was already clouding the air. He didn’t have to see through the flashes of light to know who it was, because he already knew. Who else would it be, snarling and cursing like his life depended on it?

It was over before it started, with the sickening squelch of apparition and a new hand on his arm, steadying and familiar. They stumbled against a wall, a long-forgotten alleyway, filled with trash and grime and Sirius.

“She doesn’t even need my help recruiting werewolves,” Remus hissed as soon as they landed, not wasting a second. “They’re all on her side anyways.”

“Shh, Remus,” Sirius whispered. He pulled Remus close, leaning against the wall and breathing in fresh air, supporting them both. He wasn’t even shocked. Neither of them were, because this capture-and-rescue happened far too often for both of them. “You’re safe. Please, let’s forget about the war for a minute.”

Remus wanted to argue, but he couldn’t. Not with Sirius’s drawn expression and tired eyes and warm arms. Reluctantly, Remus allowed himself to be enveloped in the embrace. “Fine,” he whispered, wishing he could appreciate the crisp air like Sirius. “But only for a minute.”

The war couldn’t wait much longer than that.


	9. Braided

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's just another day, and Remus is braiding Sirius' hair.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: "I like it rough."
> 
> (Pairing: Remus Lupin/Sirius Black)

“Remus,” he whined, a long noise that came floating out on a breath of air. “Remus, you’re an absolute menace. My hair is  _fine_  how it is.” He was leaning back against the couch where Remus was sitting, facing towards the common room fire that was crackling merrily in the grate.

“It’ll be fine when I’m done with it too,” Remus grinned, reaching for another strand of hair and tugging at it, working it into an intricate braid that Sirius could feel running along his scalp.

“Just because Lily lets you braid her hair, and just because my hair is long doesn’t mean I want it all done up!”

“Shhh,” Remus insisted, “Be quiet. You can take it out as soon as I’m done, my hands just need something to do.”

Sirius muttered a choice suggestion about something else Remus could do with his hands, but he didn’t try to pull away. There was something entirely too comforting about Remus’s hands carding through his hair.

Besides, it made sure Sirius was facing away from him, which was always a good thing when they were alone together. It was only a matter of time before Sirius snapped and ran his own hands through Remus’s curly mop of hair, and Merlin knows  _that_ wouldn’t end well.

It was quiet but for the sounds of the fire, so irregular that it became a steady kind of unpredictable, popping and shooting glowing orange sparks. Remus’s hands were gentle, too gentle for somebody so strong and coarse, and it scared Sirius. 

“I’m done,” Remus whispered, his hands lingering against Sirius’s hair for a moment before pulling away, leaving Sirius feeling oddly bereft. Sirius stood up and turned around to face Remus, his head feeling unnatural with his hair pulled tight, tugging at him when he tried to move.

“How?” Remus asked, his brow furrowing in annoyance and the hint of something else.

“How what?” Sirius asked worriedly. “Did something happen?”

“No, nothing happened,” Remus mumbled, turning away. “Nothing at all. It looks good.” He sounded too tired for 3 PM, on a day that was far away from the full moon.

“Then what’s the problem?” Sirius nagged. Whenever Remus got like this, Sirius learned it was best to fight stubborn with stubborn. Especially when it pertained to him and possibly his hair.

“I braided your hair because I was hoping you’d look ugly, but you look bloody good in everything,” Remus groaned, turning back to Sirius and collapsing onto the couch again. “You don’t even have to  _try._ ”

“Yeah, well, I could say the same for you. Waltzing around in those stupid jumpers and — and —” Sirius broke off, a flush working its way up his neck.

Remus smiled. Sirius smiled back tentatively.

“Do you want me to take them out now?” Remus whispered, gesturing to the braids, and Sirius nodded. He didn’t like his hair braided, he only liked it when Remus was the one braiding it, carefully taming his hair and winding it into patterns.

Remus gestured to the floor, sweeping his hand grandly, and Sirius rolled his eyes before settling down once more. His back pressed against the cushion which molded to accommodate him, and Remus’s hands settled in his hair once more.

It was gentle like before, with Sirius carefully pulling each strand out of the braid, his hands accidentally brushing against Sirius’s skin every now and then. Sirius couldn’t take it — the contact, the gentleness, any of it. He couldn’t stand how much he liked it.

“Hurry up,” he whined, turning to look at Remus.

“Like this?” Remus started pulling harshly at his hair, a grin on his face, forcing Sirius to jerk his head back around and stare forwards again.

“Yeah, **I like it rough** ,” Sirius said sarcastically, bringing a hand up to his wounded head. “No, you tosser, I don’t actually want you to rip my scalp off.”

He couldn’t see Remus, but he was certain Remus was smiling. His fingers resumed their torturous unwinding, possibly even slower than before and Sirius wanted it to be  _over_ because he couldn’t take it. He was going to end up doing something stupid.

But then Remus’s hands lifted from his hair again, and Sirius let out a breath. Half relief, half disappointment.

“I have to go to Transfiguration,” Remus shrugged, standing up with a soft smile. “I’ll see you later, then?”

“Fine,” Sirius huffed, trying to collect himself. “And you’re never braiding my hair again, you pillock. You can braid Lily’s or Marlene’s.”

“Okay,” Remus said, raising his hands in a surrender that managed to look condescending. “I won’t braid it again. ”

They both knew it was a lie.


	10. Patronus

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Draco needs help with a patronus charm, and he know the best person to ask.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: "Beg for it like your life depends on it."
> 
> (Pairing: Harry Potter/Draco Malfoy)

“Please,” Malfoy said, voice hoarse from years of taunting and then the silence after the war.

“I didn’t think that word was in your vocabulary. What else will you do, if I say no? What depths will you sink to?” Harry asked. He didn’t much care for the answer, he was only trying to prove a point. “Will you grovel? Pray?  **Beg for it like your life depends on it?”**

“My life  _might_ depend on it, Potter.”

Neither of them moved.

Harry sighed, his shoulders slumping forwards. “I’m going to teach you, you know. I was always going to. Sorry I’m so — well. I’m tired and fed up and it makes me angry.”

Malfoy nodded. Clipped. Crisp. “Apology accepted. Show me now,” he said, rolling up his sleeves. “If I’m sent to Azkaban, I need something to defend myself with.”

“I’ve told you already, they can’t put you in Azkaban now that you’re cleared,” Harry sighed, but he knew it was a losing battle. Malfoy was paranoid about being sent to prison. “You need a happy memory.”

Malfoy sat there for a second, staring at the stone wall behind Harry, and then looked up with a small frown. “What qualifies as happy?”

“It has to be powerful,” Harry told him. “Something strong enough to ward them off, because if it’s too weak, they’ll just take it from you.”

Malfoy sat there again, for longer this time, concentrating on the wall behind Harry like he could drill right through it with his glare. It was a tense silence, not comfortable, at least on Harry’s end. Malfoy was too quiet, not moving the tiniest bit, not even a ruffle of his cloak.”

“I don’t have any,” he said finally. “Is there another spell besides a patronus?”

“Wait. What?”

“Is there another spell? Or a different way to cast a patronus?” Malfoy repeated impatiently.

“No, I heard that part, what did you say before?”

“I don’t have any,” Malfoy frowned, saying it low, like he didn’t want to hear himself say it.”

“What do you mean?”

“Stop being an idiot on purpose, Potter. You know exactly what I mean.” He was staring fixedly at the wall still.

“How do you not have any happy memories?”

“I have  _happy_ memories,” Malfoy said, with an air of frustrated disabandon. “But not as strong as you say they have to be. Look, is there another way, or isn’t there?”

Harry was still gaping at him.

“You can’t just brush that off!” He burst out. “That’s — that’s really sad, actually.”

“Great, Potter, you always say exactly what I need to hear,” Malfoy snarled, stowing his wand in his cloak and making to stand up. “Look, if there’s no other way, you could just say it instead of making fun of me.”

“Wait,” Harry said. “I wasn’t making fun of you. And — well, if you aren’t too stubborn, there’s a way.”

Malfoy paused, looking at Harry with a kind of hope he hadn’t seen in a long time. “There is?”

“Yeah,” Harry said. He knew he was going to regret this later, but it was the only thing that came to mind. “Have you ever seen a muggle movie?”

“A muggle… Potter, what does that have to do with anything?”

“If you don’t have a happy enough memory,” Harry said, shrugging, “We’re going to go make some.”


	11. Hide and Seek

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompts: "Bend over." and "Ow, I think you're a little bit too big."
> 
> (Pairing: Remus Lupin/Sirius Black)

“This was an awful idea,” Remus mutters, trying to cram himself further into the corner. “Why are we hiding in the same place anyways?”

“Shut up.” Sirius pushes him against the wall and follows after him, closing the door behind them. They’re in a closet, small and stifled, pressed against each other like the room has gone dull. “This is entirely your fault.”

He had a point — it was completely Remus’s fault. Although really, it started when Bellatrix hexed Lily for being a muggleborn, and Remus had gone spare.

Well, there’s not much we can do about it,” Sirius had said placatingly, but Remus was having none of it.

“We can teach them a lesson.”

“No. We’ve gotten into enough fights recently.”

“Well, let’s challenge them,” Peter had suggested. “To something they won’t be able to win against.”

“A muggle game,” Remus had said, eyes alight. “Then when they lose, we’ll see if they still think they’re better than muggleborns.”

And that’s how Sirius found himself here, in a huge castle-wide game of Slytherin versus Gryffindor hide and seek, trying to wedge himself into a corner with nowhere else to go.

“Ow! I think you’re a bit too big,” Remus curses when Sirius tries to close the door behind him.

“Then make room! Bend over, I don’t bloody care!”

“For Merlin’s sake,” Remus murmurs, as they finally manage to close the door. It’s stifling, and they’re pressed against each other in the dark. Remus is exceedingly grateful for the lack of light, but he tries not to examine the reason behind it.

They stay there, huddled together like they do after the moon, laughing silently against each other. Remus can feel Sirius’s whole body shaking when he laughs.

Sirius knows that despite Remus’s stubbornness, he doesn’t like the dark, so he quietly pulls Remus closer to him.

It’s hours they wait, pressed together, whispering occasionally to each other and sharing sarcastic comments. It must be hours later when the door opens and James’s grinning face is peering in at them.

“The game’s been over for forever mate,” he laughs at Remus, gesturing to the map. “We beat them by a mile, with this.”

“What —?” Remus splutters, face bright red, still pressed up against Sirius in the closet. “It already ended? Why didn’t you come bloody tell us?”

James coughs, although it sounds like it’s a laugh that he’s trying to disguise.

“Well —”

“Ah, you see…” Peter trails off, gesturing between them. “We weren’t sure if you told him, Moony, about the thing, you see. And then we saw you on the map in a closet together, and we thought you were… you know —” he cuts himself short, looking slightly sheepish.

“Wormy!” Remus says, horrified.

“If you told me about what thing?” Sirius asks, looking between Remus, James, and Peter. Peter is seeming to realize his mistake, Remus is pointedly looking away and playing with the hem of his robes, and James is sighing with something that looks like disappointment.

“Nothing!” Peter squeaks. “It’s just a saying!”

“Bollocks,” Sirius snorts. “What did you think we were doing in the —?” This time he’s the one who halts in the middle of a sentence, eyes widening in comprehension. “You thought we were…?”

“Well, it was a possibility!” James says defensively, crossing his arms. “We thought we’d better not disrupt you.”

“Wait,” Sirius says, eyes widening further. “What was the thing you didn’t tell me?” His voice is quieter, eyes trailing over the scars on Remus’s face like maybe he’ll find an answer at the end.

“Yeah, we’re going,” James says decisively, grabbing Peter’s arm and dragging him away despite Remus’s protests.

Then it’s the two of them, standing in the hallway that’s never felt so big after the closeness of the past few hours.

“What was it?” Sirius asks again, and Remus sighs in defeat, looking away and shaking his head.

“You already know.” His voice is muffled because he’s facing away, but Sirius hears nonetheless. He knows the voice too well to be mistaken.

“You fancy me, don’t you?” Sirius asks, not wanting to waste time by beating around the bush, and Remus nods. They’re too straightforward to be embarrassed or to talk in riddles, and they’re both too done with lies to pretend it isn’t true.

Remus looks like he’s about to apologize, but he stops himself. Sirius hates it when he apologizes for things he shouldn’t have to be sorry for, and Remus knows that.

“Are you mad?” Remus asks eventually, still facing away, and Sirius laughs, finally coming back to himself.

“Mad?” he asks, incredulous. “Moony, you idiot.”

Remus turns around, and he isn’t sad. He’s too used to sadness, so his face is resigned instead.

“Where do we stand?” he asks. “Are we still friends?”

Sirius sighs at how oblivious he is. “How about we discuss this somewhere more private?”

Remus frowns. “Like where?”

“Like the closet,” Sirius says, winking at Remus, who doesn’t smile back.

“That’s not funny,” he admonishes. Sirius doesn’t laugh.

“It wasn’t meant to be,” he whispers. “I wasn’t joking.”

 

Up in the Gryffindor dormitory, James stares at the map and cheers.


	12. The Coming of Spring

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's spring, and the world is starting to bloom.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: One of yumenouveau's beautiful pieces of art!!
> 
> (Pairing: Sirius Black/Remus Lupin

Sirius did  _not_  like winter.

No, he didn’t just dislike winter, he hatedit. He hated the chill that swept through the walls and seemed to burrow under his skin regardless of the number of blankets he piled on his bed, like it carried claws and fangs that could tear apart anything in the way.

He hated drifting into consciousness every morning and staring out the bleak window, knowing he would have to get out of bed and that he was merely prolonging the inevitable, counting down from ten time and time again in an effort to  _make himself move_.

He hated watching his dog frolic through the flurries like it was the best time of the year, barking happily and wondering why Sirius was standing at the window with tears rolling down his face, covered with dirt from the days gone with no shower.

He hated it, he hated that he hated it, and he hated the hate for the hate and —

It was one big cesspool of watching daylight fade and wondering if the flowers would ever bloom again.

So when spring finally came, it felt like the entire world had dawned. The sky broke open and the sun melted away all the problems in one fell sweep of warmth that seemed impossible after the months of being shut away.

Sirius cried more in those transition days than he ever did in his life. It was a combination of happy and sad, of losing a quarter of the year to the seasons and having spring finally dawn, of pent up emotion that had frozen into ice during the winter. He was melting and coming undone, and his tears were free to flow once more.

He’d never been so happy to cry.

The cherry blossoms unfroze too, blooming with a beauty that couldn’t be matched, and Sirius would sit on the bench underneath, staring up at the flowers and laughing aloud when a blossom fell on his head.

It was one day in late spring when somebody sat down next to him. They sat there quietly for a minute, both staring out over the walking path, before Sirius looked over at him.

“Hello,” the newcomer said tentatively, fiddling with the edge of his jacket. He didn’t look nervous, just as though he needed somewhere to put his fingers. “You’re always sitting here.”

Sirius laughed, throwing his head back and reaching above him to caress the soft petals of the cherry blossom.

“In the spring,” he conceded, wondering if it was possible to smile so much that you wore yourself out for the rest of eternity.

Maybe it should have been awkward as they sat side by side, staring at the cherry blossoms and not speaking another word, but it wasn’t. Not for Sirius at least. He could have sat there for ages, not speaking, reveling in the coming of spring.

Maybe it was a minute before the man stood up, but Sirius knew it was probably longer, because time sped by him with the turning of the seasons. Always too fast, when he needed it to last.

He looked uncertainty back at Sirius, like he was unsure whether to talk or not, unsure what the etiquette would be in this situation. Sirius didn’t care much for etiquette, so he smiled and waved. “I’ll see you around I guess,” he said, and the man nodded gratefully at him before turning to go again.

“Wait,” Sirius called him back. “What’s your name?”

“I’m Remus,” he said softly, tugging at his jacket again. “You?”

“Sirius. I’ll see you around.”

When he walked away, Sirius still couldn’t breath. He was flooded with being okay, with the beauty of the cherry blossoms and the beating sun and the way Remus had so casually approached him. Everything was so wonderful that nothing mattered in the slightest.

Sirius was tired of waiting. Tired of wasted opportunities and running away from chances and missing out because of the cold.

When Remus walked by the next day, he called out and beckoned him over, and they sat together for a few minutes talking about nothing. But it didn’t feel like nothing.

When Remus waved goodbye, smiling at him, they held eye contact for slightly longer than normal. It felt good.  _Everything_ felt good.

The next time when he went to sit down at the bench, Remus was already there. He was sitting on the bench, idly flicking a blossom back and forth between his fingers. Fidgeting, always fidgeting.

“Hi Sirius,” he smiled, and Sirius sat down on the bench next to him. It was warmed by the sun, and it felt heavy against his legs, pushing into his skin and his heart, and he smiled wider. It was so bright and beautiful that he could barely take it.

“Remus,” he responded, trying to hold the tears back from his eyes. “How are you?”

They talked idly, conversation that held no real weight, like usual. When Remus stood up to walk, he handed the flower blossom he’d been toying with to Sirius, accompanied by a goofy bow, and their fingers brushed.

It was so stupid. So stupid for that to matter, but his skin was warm and it felt like the sun all over again, like his smile and the light and the cherry blossoms blooming. And Sirius smiled, for the millionth time, storing up sunshine before the winter would snatch it away.

The next time, Sirius asked Remus if he wanted to walk around the pond. It was strange and impossible and wonderful when Remus said yes, because that wasn’t something Sirius did. He didn’t talk to people or approach people first or offer his assistance. He lurked and waited for people to come to him.

So now with them walking side by side, Sirius wondered if he’d been mistaken his whole life. He wondered if he’d never truly thawed until now, and it was a beautifully open feeling, like he’d never really been breathing, and now his throat was opened up to a world he knew nothing about.

He wasn’t one to cry either, but these daysthere were perpetual tears in his eyes because everything was so  _okay._

He walked, walked, walked, and they walked, walked, walked. The pond glistened. They talked. They laughed. They smiled.

Remus leaned forward slightly when he laughed, and picked at his sweater during the silences, a shy smile teasing the corner of his mouth upwards.

“We should do this again sometime,” Remus said when they got back, and even though he was brimming with a strange confidence, the reassurance swept over him in a wave of relief.

He wasn’t the only one who’d enjoyed it.

“I’ll be here most days,” Sirius shrugged, looking back at him. “I’d love to walk whenever you want to.”

“Well, I’ll be here tomorrow,” Remus said.

He was. He was sitting on the bench again, and he looked like he belonged there now. He was part of the spring. Cherry blossoms and Remus, a garden of happiness that he never wanted to stop blooming.

They walked again, and maybe they were closer to each other this time. Maybe their arms brushed together, maybe they both blushed and didn’t mention it.

Sirius thought there was something more, hovering, always hovering. He might be shy, but it was springtime, so he was swept away with his strange optimism. Remus felt like more.

He knew he could do something more — ask Remus out, maybe.

Except he was fine with how it was. They were in this limbo, this thawing season between winter and summer, this blooming where things grew slowly and sometimes the reveal was more beautiful than the end.

So they walked and laughed, Sirius cried and Remus didn’t mention it, they threw cherry blossoms at each other and ate lunch by the pond.

Sirius had stopped counting days on his calendar like he usually did, crossing of the weeks until winter would come again. And when he realized he was tracking days instead by the curl of Remus’s hair and the way his right foot turned out slightly more than his left, he wasn’t sure what to think.

But it was spring. So he didn’t.

It was a week later, seven days of Remus and spring, of petals and pink, of sunshine and long lost ice, when Remus made the first move.

They’d come full circle around the lake, standing under the tree as it rained blossoms down on them in the softly blowing wind.

There was a long branch reaching down, right over their heads, and Remus looked up at it with a nervous smile.

“It reminds me of mistletoe,” he said with a small laugh, a miniscule flush, a sidelong glance at Sirius, and Sirius understood that the decision was being passed on to him. Remus had admitted something in that strange way of his, and now Sirius had a choice.

He could pass it up if he wanted, brush it off, laugh, and walk along. Or he could do something else instead.

“It does,” he whispered, shifting slightly closer to Remus. “It looks like mistletoe.”

They were inches apart now, breathing the same air, and breathing out in time, the scent of newness flooding the space around them and making the world taste that much sweeter.

Sirius reached his hand up slightly to caress the flower, feeling the velvet against his palm, soft against callused, and cool in a way that was nothing like the sting of winter.

He let his hand drop slightly and brush against Remus’s skin ever so slightly, and then they were together. Standing together, pressed together, together, in spring, together, in sun.

Together, under the flowers.

Together.

He would worry about winter when it came, because now it was cherry blossoms and Remus and spring and everything beautiful.


	13. Eternal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "You said — you said we’d be eternal."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Eternal
> 
> (Pairing: Remus Lupin/Sirius Black)

“Eternal.”

It was a joke at first, mocking the people who claimed forever was a possibility, whispered between them in the corridors of Hogwarts long after everyone had gone to bed. They would laugh, sit side by side, arms pressed together, legs dangling, trading stories that made no sense and didn’t have to.

“Eternal,” they would laugh, rolling their eyes. “We’ll last forever, you and I. We’ll be eternal.” Everything was a joke back then, because the world was light and jokes didn’t stick in their throat.

And then, the war came.

“Eternal,” they would whisper to each other during the long nights, despite — or rather, _in spite_ , of the war, in hopes that it would hold the deadly chasm of lights and shouted spells at bay. It wasn’t funny now. It was a wish, a tentative promise that they never wanted to break, a word that they wanted to be more than just a word.

“Eternal.” They murmured it to each other in dusty corners of Grimmauld Place, dirt and dark magic trapped in the spider webs, the place reeking of death. They said it as a shield, a barrier.  _We have to get through this,_  they’d think.  _We might die. I love you. I’m terrified. I want this to end._

They never said any of that out loud. They only said one word, the word that had to mean more because they couldn’t bring themselves to speak the rest.

“Eternal.” Remus choked it out as he stood in front of the bouquet of flowers, resting above the earth but not sprouting and growing, not blooming, just a colorful splash that would wither away with time. “You said — you said we’d be eternal.”

But now the word had come circle, nothing more than a mocking joke, a chiding, a curse. Eternal was a jeering word, making him curse himself for being stupid enough to ever think it could be anything more than a joke.

“ _Eternal_ ,” he pleaded to the gravestone. “ _Eternal_.  _Eternal_.”

Not a sound came back — nothing but the long lost ghost of Sirius’s laugh ringing through his skull.


	14. Burned Away

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The house is burning, and his world is crumbling to the ground.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Sirius on Halloween
> 
> warning - this is sad and I apologize :)
> 
> (Pairing: Remus Lupin/Sirius Black)

He was suffocating, being twisted and turned, his intestines folding inside him. Finally, the familiar sensation of apparition subsided, and he was left on the road with a growing sense of nausea.

Sirius wasn’t sure if the nausea was from apparating or from the uneasy feeling seated deep inside his soul.  _Peter was supposed to be in his hiding place. Peter was supposed to be there. Where had he gone. Where had he gone?_

The thoughts bounced through his skull with every step, and with each time they passed through his mind, the uneasiness grew.

It had been the perfect ruse. Peter, the incapable terrified little boy, as the Potter’s secret keeper? It was a laughable notion, because who would entrust so much to a person with such a finicky soul?

And the more Sirius thought about it, the more ridiculous he realized it was. Nobody would make Peter their secret keeper. And of course, that would throw them off, but maybe it had been a mistake. Maybe Peter really wasn’t capable, maybe he had let something slip.

There was a twinge of guilt in his stomach while he considered that Peter might have messed up. He trusted Peter, of course, but he was supposed to be in hiding. Peter was supposed to be there while they came after Sirius, the intelligent and strong and magically apt one.

And he hadn’t been there. The safe house was deserted.

As Sirius strode quickly down the road, he thought he felt a stinging in his lungs when he breathed in, and acrid kind of tinge. Almost like —

Almost like smoke.

He broke into a sprint, then, a savage full on run that almost sent him sprawling across the ground. He ignored the street lamps around him, the trees and houses blurring in his haste, and then he could see it.

There was too much light, because a house wasn’t supposed to be that light, and it was all the wrong color. It was yellow and orange and red and flickering.

It was beautiful and terrible, a splintering beauty that curled up in rings of smoke.

Sirius didn’t stop running. There was a twinge in his ankle, and his lungs seemed to be holding a notch less than their usual capacity, but he didn’t stop. He  _couldn’t_  stop.

The next hour was a blur of colors and screams and blistering heat, watching as Hagrid’s hulking form mounted his motorcycle, a bundle of blankets held tight in his arms.

His senses were entirely overloaded. There were licks of smoke in his mouth and burning flesh in his nose and sirens in his ears and comforting hands on his arm that weren’t comforting in the slightest and a collapsing house in his eyes.

Peter. It was all he could think about, his name practically written across the house in a smear of soot. Peter must have been caught, or maybe Remus –

No, that was too terrible a thought. Peter buggering it up, he could see. Remus going to Voldemort? He couldn’t even entertain the thought, because he valued his sanity too much.

Remus was the only constant he had now.

That’s when it hit him. He and Remus were the only ones left. James and Lily were dead. Peter probably was too, at the hands of Voldemort. It was just them.

Until he saw a flash of movement out of the corner of his eyes, a small person darting away, running with a scurrying kind of gait. It was the kind of way a rat would run, and Sirius could have recognized it from a million miles away. He probably could have recognized it with his eyes closed.

This time he didn’t even think before he started sprinting. He wouldn’t let Peter’s darting figure get away from him, not when it held all the answers.

If Peter was alive, then —

He didn’t have time to dwell. Instead he focused on the ground, each foot striking it with a force that he felt jolting up his burning legs.

“Peter!” He bellowed, when Peter showed no sign of stopping.

They were in the middle of a square now, and there were muggles swarming around them. At one point, Sirius might have been concerned with the fact that he was covered in soot, wearing torn wizarding robes and clutching his wand, but that wasn’t important right now.

Peter stared at him, eyes blown wide, and it was a tortured kind of look that made Sirius recoil. Peter never made anyone recoil, let alone Sirius.

“What did you do?” Sirius whispered, and his voice came out jagged, as though the words had been torn up coming out of his throat.

Peter just kept staring, his eyes locking onto something just past Sirius.

“Sirius Black killed them! Sirius Black killed Lily and James Potter!” It was a blood curdling noise, halfway between a yell and a scream. It was powerful and angry, entirely disproportionate to Peter’s cowering stance and short stature.

Sirius couldn’t even register the words before there was light everywhere, swamping his visions.

Then there were screams — as if he needed more of those — and a sickening thud, cracking noises, and then jets of light everywhere. Vaguely he could hear voices yelling at him, telling him to  _put his hands up,_ but nothing at all made sense.

All he could do was stand there blankly, dead corpses scattering the street. Peter was gone.

Gone. Gone, like James and Lily.

Gone.


	15. Shooting Star

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Of shooting stars and daydreams
> 
> Of things that we’re not meant to see
> 
> Of things we want and cannot reach
> 
> Of screaming songs and subtlety

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: shooting star, rhythm
> 
> (Pairing: Remus Lupin/Sirius Black)

Remus took the same seat he always did. He thought of it as his now, taking comfort from the ease of routine and the familiarity of it all, letting it still his breathing and consume him whole.

It was relatively quiet around him, the café filled only with the low rumble of chatter and idle voices, calling out to each other and laughing in equal measure.

So he sat and waited, staring up at the microphone where he knew Black would appear like he had every night that month.

It wasn’t long, and then there was black hair and black clothes, a nod to his namesake and a grin flashing at the crowd.

Remus sank back into his chair, letting the music curl around him and get under his skin, making the air swim and his body move with the lilt, the ever-flowing crash of his voice. A tumult, a rain, a screaming whisper, all at once.

_Of shooting stars and daydreams_

_Of things that we’re not meant to see_

_Of things we want and cannot reach_

_Of screaming songs and subtlety_

The song felt like so much more than a song, because it couldn’t be described in words, couldn’t even be described in music unless it was Black, smiling like this was no effort at all, like he’d plucked the words out of midair.

And then he shifted his gaze from where it meandered over the crowd, and it latched onto Remus’s stare, holding, intently, not letting go.

_A shooting star, it’s you I see_

_So come to me, so come to me_

He trailed off, still fixed on Remus, and people’s heads started turning to see who had captured Black’s attention, but Remus’s mind went blank as static.

Sirius allowed a small smile that felt like more than his usual grin, and he tipped his head ever so slightly at Remus.

Then he’s overtaken by the rhythm of the next song, even and perfect as always, but it doesn’t cut to his core like it so often does, because all he can think about is that look.

Black glances at him ever so often during the next few songs, that small smile still pushing at the corners of his mouth, and Remus wonders. He wonders if Black has seen him here every night, waiting for the songs and slipping out quietly when they end, burrowing himself in the low light and taking in nothing but the music.

When he finishes his last song, he grabs the glass of water from beside him, and holds it up in a joking toast to the crowd.

“To shooting stars and daydreams!” he calls, eyes finding their way back to Remus. Remus can’t move, can’t leave like he usually does, and when everybody has filed out he’s still sitting there, watching Black tinker with the microphone and put everything away.

When he’s finally found his legs, he walks up to Black, glancing around for a way to escape if he’s misread the situation.

“Hey,” he says quietly, and Black turns around with that small smile already back on his face.

“Took you long enough,” Black says. “I’ve been waiting for weeks, but you always leave before I get a chance to talk to you.”

“Oh,” Remus breathes, and they’re just looking at each other now.

“Want to get a coffee?” he asks, nodding towards the front of the shop. “My name’s Sirius, by the way.”

“Remus,” he responds, and now he can feel a smile overtaking himself too. “And yeah, I’d love to get coffee.”

_A shooting star, it’s you I see_

_So come to me, so come to me._


	16. Hidden Away

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Draco pretends not to notice, until he can't take it anymore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Drarry + auror partners + alcohol misuse/alcoholic Harry
> 
> (Pairing: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter)

Draco let himself be pushed against the wall in Harry’s office, the stone too familiar, too hard, too  _right_  for his liking.

He had no idea how Harry still thought he was oblivious after all this time, but he did. He kissed Draco with the same fumbling passion, and Draco could almost deceive himself into thinking it was perfect if he closed his eyes tight enough.

He knew that Harry was good at magic. Maybe he thought Draco couldn’t taste it — couldn’t taste the magic sparkling on his tongue, couldn’t taste the cleaning charm, couldn’t taste the alcohol lingering right behind it.

Harry was wrong, of course.

What he hadn’t counted on was how well Draco knew his taste. When Harry kissed him, Draco got the feeling it was because he wanted someone to kiss — he couldn’t care less if it was Draco or a line of other men and women. Draco kissed back, not because he wanted someone to kiss, but because it was  _Harry_.

That was the difference between him and Harry. Maybe  _other people_ wouldn’t know, wouldn’t be able to taste the alcohol that he so perfectly masked.

But Draco knew.

Draco was almost ashamed of that fact, but he did, and he could  _taste_  it, heady and strong and  _Harry_.

He pushed Harry away with a shove, shaking his head.

“I can’t do this,” he whispered, wishing that Harry would understand. “I can’t — you don’t — we can’t do this.”

“What do you mean?” Harry frowned, and Draco looked away so he wouldn’t scream out an unwarranted confession. He couldn’t tell harry that he felt. Neither of them needed that. Neither of them wanted that.

“Go fool around with someone else, okay?” Draco bit out. “I’m busy.”

“Draco,” Harry said, voice soft. “Look at me. What are you on about?”

“Harry, you come to my office every day drunk, and you pretend you aren’t.”

Harry stared at him. Stared some more. Waited. Stood. Stared.

“Nothing to say?” Draco asked, empty, shaking his head. Now he was the one craving the sweeping oblivion of alcohol flooding his body, but he couldn’t, because was tainted with Harry.

“Draco, I didn’t —”

“Didn’t mean it. I know,” Draco sighed. “You have to figure yourself out, Harry. You have to figure out a way to function without drinking. You have to figure out what you want.”

“I’ll stop,” Harry whispered. “I promise you, I’ll stop. I’ll stop, for you.”

But the next day when he came back, all Draco found was a stronger masking charm, tingling against his lips.


	17. Invisible Rain

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry tries to hide, but the rain gives him away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Drarry+invisible+rain
> 
> (Pairing: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter)

“I know you’re there, Potter.”

The voice startled Harry out of his rain-soaked reverie, and he instinctively gripped the cloak tighter against his body. It clung to him. Cold, heavy, and wet.

“It’s pointless to hide.”

There it was again, the cool, clear voice, the one that was so often tainted with disdain and a sneering grin. Harry turned his head slowly, as though that would make Malfoy unsee him. He looked down at his feet, because that must’ve been what gave him away, but his feet weren’t there.

How had Malfoy seen him? He checked the rest of his limbs, but no. They were all still missing, tucked safely away inside the permanent shell of his invisibility cloak that he’d adopted after the war. He never went anywhere without it anymore.

The rain pounded down on the rock like it was drilling into his aching skull.

“Potter.” Malfoy’s voice was tinged with annoyance, directed straight at where Harry was cowering on the rock. It was just past supper, and he had gone for a walk to escape the pile of fan mail that flooded the Gryffindor table. Usually he managed to keep it out, but sometimes they got through his filters.

“Being invisible doesn’t mean the rain passes through you, idiot.”

Harry cursed under his breath, but still didn’t move. Play dead, he thought. It was easier to play dead when every breath meant he was alive.

He huddled down tighter against the rock, pulling his cloak even closer to his skin. Why couldn’t he just get a moment of peace, away from the world and invisible? Why couldn’t Malfoy just leave him alone?

“For Merlin’s sake,” Malfoy huffed, storming over to him. He cut an imposing figure against the rain, his usually immaculate hair plastered against his head. It made him look more human, and Harry didn’t like that one bit.

Humans meant emotions, emotions were complicated, and he didn’t even remotely have the energy to deal with that.

Malfoy reached out carefully, slowly, like he was feeling around blindly in the dark for a light switch. His fingers brushed over Harry’s cloak, and he ripped it off in one smooth motion. It clung to Harry’s skin like a living being, the water sticking them together.

“What the fuck?” Harry cursed, his voice more muffled than he would have expected against the constant drone.

“Can you stop hiding for once?” Malfoy bit out tiredly, sitting down on the rock and tossing the invisibility cloak aside. “I’m not going to murder you if you show your face around me.”

“Stop.” Harry shook his head, clenching his fingers against the rock and relishing the slippery roughness against his palm. The rock was real, he was real. The world was moving. He was breathing. He took a deep breath, counting and tasting the rain against his lips.

“Stop what?”

“Stop talking,” Harry retorted. He hated this new Malfoy, the subdued one that didn’t say mean things. It wasn’t right, and Harry didn’t want to deal with it. He wanted Malfoy to scream at him so they could go on hating each other in their relative peace.

“Okay,” Malfoy said simply. He just sat, kicking at the puddles with his feet.

This wasn’t Malfoy. It couldn’t be, because Malfoy wasn’t even complaining about how the water would ruin his thousand galleon clothes, or saying that rain was for plebians.

But that was what war did, wasn’t it? It took people and twisted them until they were molded into things they’d never imagined. Ron’s uncontrollable bursts of anger, Hermione’s panic attacks, Harry’s nightmares.

But maybe for Malfoy, it had twisted him the other way,  _out_ of the darkness they had all been pitched into.

It was unsettling, to say the least.

Harry thought he should mind more than he did.


	18. Not Wearing That

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry plays quidditch, Draco watches.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Not wearing that
> 
> (Pairing: Harry Potter/Draco Malfoy)

“Absolutely not,” Draco said. He threw his hands up and backed up slowly. Dealing with Pansy and Blaise was like dealing with a tiger — you didn’t know if they would pounce, you weren’t sure how to act. Did you avoid eye contact? Did you run? Did you play dead?

Draco still wasn’t sure, after all these years.

“Absolutely  _yes,”_ Pansy said, holding up the atrocity with colors that looked glaringly wrong against the muffled darkness of the dungeons. Draco liked it down here. He liked the world muted, easier to swallow. It was the whole atmosphere that he loved, part of the reason he returned to Hogwarts for eighth year.

“This is ridiculous,” he insisted.

“You’re wearing it,” Blaise grinned, quirking an eyebrow. “You promised, remember? House unity. You  _promised.”_

“I am  **not wearing that**! Not in a million bloody years.”

“You are wearing it,” Pansy said again, and the gleam in her eye spoke far more than she needed to. That was the problem with Pansy — she was deadly loyal until she had a goal. Once she had a goal, there was  _nothing_ that would get in her way.

That meant none of his late-night-butterbeer-induced secrets would be safe.

“How much do I have to pay for you to let this go?” Draco asked as a final act of desperation,

Pansy just grinned at him.

“You’re wearing it,” she declared.

It was for that reason that Draco was marched out to the cheering stands draped in Gryffindor red and gold, sullen beneath the scarf. He singled Harry out within mere seconds of course — it was hard to miss the unruly sweep of black hair.

Eighth year was strange for a lot of reasons, the least of which was the undercurrent of depression they were all trying to stave off. The random breakdowns and the on-grounds mind healers. The nightmares, the panic attacks, the numbness and blank looks, the threats and scares and whispers, the hallucinations and flashbacks.

But over all that, there was a running theme of forgetting. And with that came a strange  _letting go,_ the same letting go that had evidently prompted Potter to sit himself beside Draco in the eighth year common room one day and demand an explanation.

It was that determination to put the past where it belonged that led to the same acquaintanceship-that-might-be-friendship (they were both too scared to label it).

It was that that that led to him being frog-marched to the Quidditch Pitch in Gryffindor colors to watch Harry play.

It was all weird, the contrast, the memories. How he used to watch Harry play and scoff at him, plagued by jealousy underneath it all. How Harry came back for him in the Room of Requirement, swooping in on his broom to save the day.

How now he viewed Harry with a mixture of a strange happiness he’d never felt before — one that felt almost soft in comparison with all the other emotions that threatened to wreak havoc inside him no matter how fiercely he refused to let them take up their space.

Their (almost-friendship-perhaps) was his saving grace, the reason that beneath all his ridiculous Gryffindor clothing, he was smiling deep inside. Smiling when Harry caught the snitch and looked up at the stands with a carefree smile that Draco hadn’t seen in a long time.

And when Harry saw him swathed in red-gold-red-gold and burst out laughing, Draco smiled a little more inside at the fact that he’d caused that laughed.

And when Harry hugged him and told him he was ridiculous, Draco thought to himself that perhaps Blaise and Pansy didn’t always have such bad ideas after all.


	19. Kill Count

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry kills, unthinking, he kills.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Meant no harm + Malfoys
> 
> (Pairing: Harry Potter/Draco Malfoy)
> 
> TW: death

Kill ten.

It wasn’t like the movies. There was no light that left their eyes, no telltale second when they died. Instead it was guesswork of pounding pulses and a network of blood.

Kill eleven.

Harry couldn’t remember a single face. He was good at that. He put them into bubbles in his mind, a swirl of appearance and details, memorized facts and last words, pleas gone ignored. He wrapped it all up, coated it in a fragile exterior, and popped the bubble.

Gone with a snap. Gone like that.

Kill twelve.

This one was faster than the rest. No struggle, no delay. Gone, gone. World vanished. Was there more after death? Harry wasn’t sure. They — whoever this one was — now had the chance to find out.

Kill thirteen, fourteen, fifteen.

Numbers creeping higher, growing steadily closer to his age. More assignments, more blood, more death.

Harry understood the circle of life now. He was one of those people who didn’t take a second for granted. He was  _living_  the circle of life. He didn’t forget. Every tick of the clock was a second in which he could die.

Nobody understood that. Nobody could see the world like him. They all saw surface deep, blind to the finer points of existence. They were happy enough, blissfully unaware. Perhaps they were even happier than Harry.

But that wouldn’t do for Harry. Everything felt so superficial when he could pull a trigger to end a life every day.

He’d lost track of numbers now. Kill count, age, time. Pointless, superficial.

There was too much more for Harry. It was like he was the only one truly living — living, but dying at the same time, because with each victim he relived death. He was alone, surrounded by the pointless existence of everyone else.

How didn’t they see the  _more_?

He was the only one, until he wasn’t.

Harry got all kinds of reactions. Begging to live, begging occasionally to get it over with and end it all. Usually begging. No,  _always_.

Until Malfoy.

“I’ve been expecting you.”

Harry had crept up on him. He didn’t expect Malfoy to hear him, not with the carpet muffling his ever step, but as he was rapidly learning, Malfoy wasn’t normal.

“How did you know I was coming?”

“Didn’t actually. I made that up.”

Harry stared at him, Malfoy shrugged.

“Why?”

“Who knows? I barely understand myself. I’m not one person, really. There’s too much to be someone.”

Harry stared, Malfoy stared back.

“Are you going to kill me?” Malfoy asked.

“Now? I don’t know. Do you want me to?”

Malfoy shrugged. “You could, if you want. It’ll happen eventually, of course.”

Harry sighed and sat down. There was something oddly intriguing about this person, and he wanted to know more, for the first time. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to see this pulse go out.

“Do you usually talk to your victims before you kill them?”

Harry shook his head. “No. You’re different.”

“Ah,” Malfoy said, looking like he’d smelled something bad. “I see. So you determine their worth first, and then decide if they should die.”

“There’s no  _should_  die. You know that isn’t how it works.”

“So how does it work?” Malfoy crossed his arms. “Why do you do it? Money? Running from the past? Pleasure?”

Harry smiled at him. “Mostly,” he said quietly, “Stopping their minds stops mine as well. I didn’t want to hurt them. I  **meant no harm.** ”

“Hm,” Malfoy said quietly. “Running from yourself.”

“In a way.”

Harry had no clue where any of this was going. All he knew was that, for the first time, his mind was quieting without the rush he got from popping bubbles in his brain.

For the first time, he had a respite from death.


	20. Words

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sirius is a writer, and Remus understands.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Why do you even bother trying? Your writing is awful
> 
> (Pairing: Sirius Black/Remus Lupin)

Sirius was eight years old when he sought out respite in writing, in the way he could close his eyes and press a pen to the page, fall asleep and wake up hours later with ink everywhere and a world taking place right before his eyes.

He didn’t understand fully then — he couldn’t get the words out in the right order, in the right places, with the same letters and sounds. He could see them in his head — they would swim, they would curl, but the second he tried to put them on a page, it was a sprawling mess of nothingness that made sense only to him.

His mother found it one day, the pages of nonsense that crafted a world for Sirius. She held them up in front of his face, tore them apart, laughed and spat.

 **“Why do you even bother trying? Your writing is awful.** You’ll never amount to anything.” She scoffed as she sauntered out of the room, ugly and sure, letting the papers flutter to the ground in a pile of ripped up nothingness.

Sirius had stared at them, that day. He’d stared at the pages, but he hadn’t cried. It didn’t matter if his mother didn’t like it, because she wasn’t a part of the world he twisted out of words. She was meaningless in his eyes.

So he collected the pages from the floor, placing them across his desk and mending the edges until they all lined up perfectly, as they had the first time around.

But it didn’t look right anymore, even ordered as it had been the first time. So he moved them. He shuffled them and taped them, put lined edges against torn ones, put pieces where they didn’t fit, rearranged the words and created a new world out of the scraps.

That was the day he realized he could build new places out of old ones, that he could write himself out of destruction and shape his reality however he wanted it to fit.

Sirius was eleven years old when he was sent off to boarding school, a place where his words had to make sense, where  _his_  world had no bearing. It was there that he sat in the corner, scrawling out stories on the back of homework he would never turn in, tuning out the class in favor of designing another story.

Sirius was twelve when his teachers threatened him, told him that he had to get his grades up, that writing silly stories didn’t matter in the real world. That they would get him nowhere in life.

He wanted to scream at them that he no longer lived in their world.

Sirius was thirteen when he met Remus, sitting in the corner of a class with his sweater pulled over his hands, staring thoughtfully down at a scribbled doodle.

Sirius was fourteen when he showed Remus his writing for the first time. He handed over a page with panic rocketing out of his every pore and watched, waiting for Remus to laugh, for Remus to tear it apart.

Except he didn’t. He read it, he smiled, he read it again, and then he ran off to grab his sketchbook. He returned half an hour later with a scratchy drawing of the story.

Sirius was sixteen when he published his first novel, born of tears and exhaustion and Remus’s soothing voice.

Sirius was sixteen when critique started pouring in, raving reviews and five star ratings.

Except not all of them. Some of them were scathing — some, he took to heart, no matter how much Remus tried to shield him from their blow.

Sirius was seventeen when he found a secret sketch hidden away under Remus’s bed, a drawing of the two of them holding hands on the stone wall outside their school. He was seventeen when he wrote a story to go along with the picture and left it in the open for Remus to find.

He was eighteen when he kissed Remus for the first time.

Sirius was nineteen, twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two, writing and writing, trying to scrape together money and figure out how his world could mesh with the one he was forced to inhabit.

Sirius was twenty-three, twenty-four, with more novels and more love, with a wedding to Remus and a flat of their own.

Sirius was twenty-five when he published a draft he’d kept hidden, a problematic story that nobody wanted to read. He was twenty-six when hate poured through his front door.

He was twenty-six when Remus illustrated the book, when he hugged Sirius tight and told him how beautiful it was.

Sirius was twenty-seven when he was finally able to take to heart the encouragement he’d been trying to give himself all along, when he finally realized what he’d understood at six years old, what he’d lost in the years between, what he’d gained back with time.

His books, his writing — they were his. His world to run to,  _his_ words to spill.

It didn’t matter if people hated them, because  _he_  didn’t.

Remus didn’t either. He illustrated every last one, with elaborate drawings and stupid spin-offs, and Sirius understood. He could write, when, where, what, who he wanted. He could write, he could be hated, but it didn’t matter.

He loved writing. Nobody, not even the hateful anonymous letters that poured into his mailbox, could take that away from him.


	21. Monster

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Night is dark, dark is scary.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Remus/Monster under the bed
> 
> (Pairing: Remus Lupin/Sirius Black)

“Hey,” Remus whispered quietly. An electric blue light had flickered into place beside him, and he rolled over, letting the sheets tangle around his legs because he didn’t care much. “You okay?”

Sirius started and look over.

“Sorry. Didn’t mean to wake you up.”

The blue light cast strange shadows across Sirius’s face, but of course they fit his features perfectly. Everything fit his features perfectly.

“No, you didn’t wake me up,” Remus smiled against his pillow. It was a lie and they both knew it, but Sirius just huffed quietly. “Something wrong?”

“No,” Sirius whispered. He curled further into the bed, letting the blankets weigh him down. Sirius did that sometimes, curled into tiny corners where he could feel something all around him. The walls, a desk, he wasn’t particular.

Remus wasn’t sure why he did it. Something to ground him perhaps. It reminded Remus oddly of a flower, curling into a bud when everything became too much, when the darkness forced him closed, and only blooming when the light rose again.

Either way, Remus knew there was something wrong.

“You’re lying,” he said quietly. “You don’t have to tell me what it is if you don’t want, but you can.”

“I know,” Sirius said tiredly. “It’s ridiculous though. Sometimes I wake up and feel like someone’s watching me, like… Well. Like Walburga is standing there, waiting for me to make a wrong move.”

“Not ridiculous,” Remus murmured. He nudged Sirius’s leg with his foot, cool against warm. “When I was younger, I was terrified there was a  **monster under the bed.**  I couldn’t get up until the sun rose, you know.”

“How’d you stop being afraid?” Sirius asked, voice heavy with sleep that he hadn’t quite shaken off yet. Remus loved these moments, because it didn’t matter what they were talking about. It could be Quidditch for all he cared. It was murmured and unguarded, draped with a vulnerability that came with unclouded minds and the throes of darkness.

“Well,” Remus said, laughing drily. “As soon as I realized the monster was on the bed instead of under it, it didn’t matter anymore.”

Sirius didn’t say anything for a moment. He stayed curled there, blue light spilling over him. Then he shifted, draping his leg over Remus’s.

“Well, that’s daft,” Sirius said quietly. “You’re the sweetest monster I’ve ever met.” He sounded slightly delirious from not sleeping, as though he wasn’t quite sure what he was saying anymore. Remus felt much the same, not sure if the words filtering into his ears were the same ones that Sirius was putting out into the world.

“You know Walburga isn’t here, right?” Remus murmured to him. He wanted to hold onto Sirius until everything went away, until he was safe and didn’t  _have_  to curl into a bud. "She’s not coming to get you.“

“It’s okay,” Sirius said. Remus’ eyes were drooping, barely holding on to the conscious world, but he just managed to catch Sirius’s words before he fell asleep. “Even if she is, I have my very own monster to fight her off.”


	22. Last Dance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's the final Hogwarts ball, and Remus hates dancing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Wolfstar + last dance
> 
> (Pairing: Remus Lupin/Sirius Black)

“As you all know, this year’s graduation ball is coming up soon,” Dumbledore announced, twinkling eyes surveying the mass of students. Remus had known the time of year would come eventually, but it didn’t stop the leaden ball of dread that had just been  _waiting_ to drop into his stomach.

Remus hated dancing.

When the day of the dance came, Remus stared out at the crowd miserably, frowning. He hated everything about this — hated the crowd that seemed to meld into one and the crushing noise, the pressing of bodies and sheen of sweat, the way everybody else was smiling and laughing and having the time of their lives. He wanted to join them, but the second he got close to the mob of people his throat would close up and his eyes would sting. He would try to smile but it felt maniacal. He would try to dance but his limbs would either lock up or go limp, and every movement felt stilted.

Sirius and James would laugh — they weren’t trying to be mean, of course, but it increased the stinging in Remus’s eyes tenfold.

“Just let go!” they’d say, swaying easily to the beat and jumping up and down, but Remus couldn’t.

He especially couldn’t take it tonight, so instead he slipped out of his chair and out the castle door into a courtyard. There were lights strung up — except, Remus realized, there was no string. There were just lights, like tiny fireflies speckling the yard, hovering over him.

Remus sat down on the ground and took a breath of fresh air. He used to think it was stupid when people said a breath of fresh air — it was all just air anyways, but now he understood. This air was easy to breathe. It loosened the knot in his lungs, and when he closed his eyes, it brushed against his face and willed away the tears that were threatening to come.

“Aren’t you gonna dance?”

There came the voice from behind him, the one he could recognize in any occasion, no matter how sour his mood.

And this was the other reason Remus hated dances — watching Sirius dance with every person that so much as looked his direction, grinning at them, moving with them.

“No,” Remus said quietly. He hunched his shoulders but then relaxed them just as quickly. It was Sirius. Nothing to be scared of.

“Oh come on, it’s our  **last dance** here at Hogwarts!”

“Too many people,” Remus said quietly. There wasn’t a chance he was going back in there. He knew how it would end: him hyperventilating, James shooting him worried looks, and then him running away to have a shaking breakdown in the common room.

“We don’t have to go back inside,” Sirius said, and he was standing in front of Remus now, “But it’s our last dance. Come on.” He held out his hand and Remus stared at him in disbelief, from his calloused palm to his face and back again.

“You —?”

“Are you gonna dance or do I have to drag you up here?” Sirius asked with a smirk, hand still outstretched. Remus reached up hesitantly to take it. It was almost like the fresh air in the way that it grounded him. He felt looser with Sirius, less locked up. It was okay if he messed up, because there wasn’t such a thing out here.

“I don’t know how to dance,” he said, and his limbs felt like jelly, although perhaps that was due to Sirius holding his hand.

“Follow me,” Sirius smiled, and he led Remus gently in a step-dance, his hand coming down to rest against Remus’s waist. “Of course you can dance. All you have to do is move.”

They could hear music from inside, but it was quiet from such a distance. Muted, like the hovering fairy lights, like the soft expression on Sirius’s face. The lights sprinkled across his skin like glowing freckles, resting against the curving bow of his lip as he whispered through the silence.

“See? Of course you can dance.”

Somehow they had gravitated closer now, close enough that Remus could feel the heat emanating from Sirius’s body. He shivered from the heat, but that was a normal reaction around Sirius. Normal in its contradiction. Sirius, Remus, always a contradiction in the best of ways.

“You don’t have to stay out here with me,” Remus said quietly. “You can go back in and dance with everyone else.”

Sirius laughed quietly.

“I’d much rather dance with you, unless you want me to go.”

“Y-you would? No, that’s — that’s fine, you can stay.”

When the music began to fade, Sirius slowed to a stop, hand still in Remus’s, the other still burning against his hip. There was a quiet mumble of voices still ghosting over them, but mostly the only thing he could hear was Sirius’s breathing and his own pounding heart, bothly oddly uneven.

“Do you want me to go?” Sirius asked. They were so close, his breath falling against Remus.

“I — no,” Remus whispered. He was too overwhelmed to think about what he was saying, so he let his mouth talk without putting any thought into what words it spilled. They were staring into each other’s eyes, and this couldn’t be normal.

It couldn’t be, because he already knew the exact grey of Sirius’s eyes — he knew how they looked when Sirius was tired and they were underlined by shadows, when he’d been crying and they were rimmed with red, when he was flouncing around the common room with his eyes rimmed in Marlene’s glittery eyeshadow just to annoy her. He knew Sirius inside and out, the way he barely knew anybody.

Come to think of it, he wasn’t even sure what  _color_ Peter’s eyes were, let alone how they looked depending on his mood.

He was aware of the moment stretching out between them, but time seemed less important than it usually did.

“School’s almost over, right?” Sirius laughed nervously, his hand tightening somewhat as he spoke. “Now’s the time to take chances, I guess. If there’s ever a time.”

“Yeah,” Remus whispered. “I guess so.”

And then — without warning, although really the whole night had been one screaming warning light — Sirius leaned in and kissed him. It was perfect. It was perfect, not because it was a kiss, not because of Sirius’s warm hand on his waist.

No, it was perfect because he could feel Sirius smiling against his lips, and he could practically feel the crinkle in Sirius’s eyes that he knew would be there if he looked.

It was perfect, because Sirius was  _happy_ , and that was all Remus had ever wanted.


	23. Happy Birthday

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's Sirius's birthday, something he isn't used to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wolfstar + Happy Birthday
> 
> (Pairing: Sirius Black/Remus Lupin)

Sirius awoke on the day of his birthday but refused to open his eyes. Instead, he watched the dark shapes that swam in front of his eyelids, punctuated by bursts of color as light poured through the window. He curled further into his comforter.

Birthdays for Sirius had never been anything special. Stiff celebrations, parties with other esteemed pureblood families, and warning looks from his mother that said  _don’t dishonor the Blacks._

Besides, he hadn’t told any of his friends it was his birthday today.

When he finally pried his eyes open, the dormitory was already empty. It wasn’t unusual — Sirius usually slept in on weekends and everyone always went to breakfast before him, although he was surprised Remus wasn’t still there.

Remus usually waited for him, for some reason, sitting in bed and reading until Sirius finally managed to through off the covers. Not that he minded it.

In fact, Sirius  _very much_ didn’t mind it. The way Remus got so concentrated when he was reading, brow in a permanent furrow, his curled hair mussed and falling in front of his face. His carefree smile when he saw that Sirius had finally woken up. 

Sirius shook his head and pulled himself out of bed by sheer force of will.

He could see that the common room was dark as he trudged down the stairs, and held back the sigh he felt buried in his chest. It was just a birthday. It didn’t mean anything, really.

And then he walked into the room and everything exploded in a burst of color and noise and light.

“Happy Birthday!”

It was yelled from every corner of the room with excited voices and smiling faces, jumping out of seemingly nowhere.

“Where did you come from?” Sirius gasped, staring around. There was James and Marlene and Dorcas and Frank and — everyone was there, grinning up at him.

“It was Remus’s idea,” James snorted, and Sirius looked over to see Remus standing shyly in the corner, looking over at him with that quirked smile that made his stomach twist into itself and his throat constrict momentarily. “He learned a disillusionment charm,” James continued, grinning, and Sirius walked over to Remus.

“Thanks,” he whispered, hugging Remus, feeling him breathe, the easy rise and fall of his chest.

“Don’t thank us,” Remus murmured, “It’s your birthday.”

The party was raging and loud, filled with plenty of food that James had taken pleasure of nicking from the kitchen, and there was music and dancing and confetti that clouded the air with color until Sirius could barely see anything.

When the party finally cleared out, Remus stayed in the common room, stayed behind, sitting on the couch.

“Hey,” Sirius said, sitting down next to him and sinking into the couch. “Thanks for — for this. For all of it.”

Remus just smiled at him, and Sirius hated it — hated the flush he felt rising in his neck.

“It’s your birthday,” Remus said, “You deserve it.”

“Deserve it?” Sirius scoffed, “There’s nothing about me that deserves this. I mean, just look at me.”

Remus stared at him in shock.

“What?” he asked, sounding mildly shocked. “You mean, you don’t — how do you not realize? Do you not understand how brilliant you are?”

“What?” Sirius laughed, “What are you even talking about?”

“Sirius,” Remus said, turning to face him. Their knees bumped together, and the emptiness of the common room made it feel that much more stifling and freeing, like anything could happen, like this could be… “Sirius, you’re amazing.”

“Don’t —”

“You’re so strong. Anything that life throws at you, you take it without a backwards glance. You’re loyal — you stand up for your friends no matter what.”

“I don’t —”

“Shhh,” Remus whispered, and Sirius listened. “You encourage people who are shy, and you’re unendingly supportive. You’re funny, creative, you’re just — you’re  _you.”_

Sirius stared at him. Their knees were still pressing together, and they were looking at each other, quiet. Remus’s eyes did a flickering thing, over his face, resting on his lips for a seconds breath.

“R-Remus?”

“I’m being kind of obvious, aren’t I?” Remus blurted out with a sad little laugh. “I overdid it, didn’t I? I’m sorry.”

“Remus, what are you talking about?”

Remus buried his face in his hands. His next words were lost in his palms, but Sirius heard them anyway, because the common room was so entirely silent in comparison.

“I like you,” he whispered. So quiet, so so quiet.

Sirius couldn’t help it. He reached out and took Remus’s hand like he’d yearned to do so many times, took it in his own and felt how their skin fit together.

“I like you too, you idiot.”


	24. Apple Picking

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Draco has never gone apple picking, and Harry is determined to remedy that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Draco + Apples
> 
> (Pairing: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter)

“You’ve never been apple picking, you mean?” Harry asked incredulously, staring out at the perfectly trimmed grounds of the manor. “But there are apple trees all along your grounds!”

“We don’t  _pick_ them,” Draco said, looking almost horrified. “That’s not — that’s ridiculous! What kind of heathens would  _pick_  them? Do you know how much money it cost for these particular type of gourmet apples?”

Harry couldn’t help it. It bubbled up in his throat and burst out of him without his permission — a laugh like he hadn’t felt in a long time. He couldn’t help it, looking at the insulted expression on Draco’s face.

“Gourmet apples? You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“No!” Draco said, crossing his arms in defense. “I’m absolutely not joking. I wouldn’t joke about something like this.”

“Well, that’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard in my life,” Harry proclaimed, and then he ran across the grass with Draco’s shouts still echoing behind him.

“Hey!” he yelled, “Get back here!”

He caught up with Harry in the middle of a long line of apple trees, as pristine as Draco had made them sound, not a blemish on them. Harry strongly suspected that there was added magic to help them remain in such a state, but Draco denied it with a scoff — something about keeping them  _natural._

“Do you even eat these?” Harry asked, looking at the bright ripe fruit.

“Are you stupid?” Draco asked. “IThey aren’t for eating, Potter. It’s part of the  _presentation.”_

“Yeah,  _that’s_ stupid,” Harry said back, with gusts of laughter in between each word, and he reached towards one of the branches to grab an apple from where it was hanging low.

He held it out to Draco, who resolutely crossed his arms tighter.

“Come on,” Harry wheedled, “Just try it? Please?”

“Oh for Merlin’s sake,” Draco said, and he reached out a hand with a roll of his eyes, skin even paler against the sheen of the apple. Harry couldn’t keep the satisfied smile off his face anymore than he’d been able to hold back his laughter earlier. And then, without warning, Draco reached behind him and grabbed an apple from the tree in one fluid movement.

And threw it at Harry.

“Oh,” Harry said, warning creeping into his voice, “You absolute sneak. You’re going to  _get_ it.” He grabbed an apple of his own and tossed it right back, but Draco had already thrown up a shield charm, and he was grabbing another apple in the meantime.

Soon they were both sprawled on their backs with apples littering the ground around them, laughing harder than Harry had ever laughed, absentmindedly tossing the bright fruits back and forth.

“You’re utterly ridiculous,” Draco complained, mourning the apples that were now bruised. He kicked at one.

“You love it,” Harry grinned back, picking up an apple and taking a bite.

Draco just rolled his eyes, shook his head, and stared up at the sky in exasperation.

Perhaps he did.


	25. Dead Ends

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Malfoy has disappeared, and Harry has to find him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Open your eyes+shackles
> 
> (Pairing: Harry Potter/Draco Malfoy)
> 
> TW: death

They found him three days after the disappearance, trudging through the woods and trying to follow the waning magical signature, stopping every so often because they’d lost it.

Harry hadn’t slept for any of those days, but he wasn’t tired. Not in the normal way, at least, with his eyes yearning to close. His eyes weren’t tired. His mind was tired. Tired of worrying, of losing, of reaching dead ends and worrying that the real end would lead to the dead.

He was chained to the ground,  **shackles**  twisting around his ankles, looking even paler than usual. Harry would never have thought that possible. It almost amused him.

“Is he alive?” That was Ron, looking down at him with a disparaging grunt. It was no secret that Ron hated everyone and everything connected with the Death Eaters, especially after what had happened to Fred. Harry had stopped fighting him on it, even though he wanted Ron to understand that everything about Draco was different.

The war taught them more than anything that you couldn’t force people into forgiveness.

“Dr — Malfoy,” Harry hissed, seeing the look in Ron’s eyes and changing tact mid-word. “Malfoy.  **Open your eyes** , please, open your eyes.”

He was surprised to feel the twinge in his heart. He thought he’d have gotten used to all the deaths, after everything.

Everything between them had been a secret. 

They didn’t understand it themselves, really, only that they would meet each other in dark corners and sit side by side. They rarely talked, didn’t touch, because Malfoy hated being touched.

They would just sit side by side.

Sometimes Harry would cry, sometimes Malfoy would murmur words of comfort that Harry wasn’t sure he could actually hear.

They would sit, and it was strange, because Harry had no idea why they did it. They didn’t mention it outside of dark corners — in the corridors, it was simple nods of courtesy. In the office, it was complete professionalism.

But when nobody else would there, they sat side by side.

And now Draco —  _Malfoy,_ Harry reminded himself, because Ron and everybody else was there, and they hated Malfoy — now Malfoy was lying cold on the ground.

“Open your eyes,” he begged, trying not to stare at the way the shackles cut into his wrist. This had only been a matter of time, really. Somebody had been coming for all the past Death Eaters, finding them each in turn and hurting them. They’d all known it would be Malfoy eventually.

“He’s dead,” one of the other Aurors said harshly, looking away.

“Right,” another said. “Get the body.”

“No,” Harry said, before he could keep the word in his mouth. He couldn’t help it — he wanted to scream now, to make up for all the words he hadn’t said to Draco when he had the chance. He could barely even comprehend what was happening. “I’ll take care of it. Go back to the office.”

The others looked at each other, but did what he said without a question. He was Harry Potter after all.

As soon as they left, Harry lay beside him, a cruel imitation of their dark hours.

“Open your eyes,” he whispered, but Malfoy didn’t speak. They never spoke when they were lying next to each other. It was pathetically ironic. Harry wanted to cry.

He didn’t. He just lay there until he had nothing left inside him, and then he stood, and disapparated.

The world took everything and everyone, one by one. He shouldn’t have been surprised.


	26. Back to Him

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sirius has to escape from his house after all that's happened.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Sirius going to James'
> 
> Pairing: None

It wasn’t a single moment like Sirius would have expected. No, it was more a culmination of things, little insults and sprinkled sneers.

It was strange, because Sirius was usually spurred on by their muttered comments — they used to give him  _energy,_ to make him  _fight back._ They wanted him to act more like a pureblood? He nicked a muggle motorcycle. They wanted him to associate with more esteemed people and court girls? Enter Remus, a werewolf and most decidedly not a girl.

He would laugh in their faces, stand up for Regulus, let their words flow into his blood and twist him into a rage that fueled his burning passion to be himself.

But it had a draining force that was slowly but steadily shutting him down, day after day.

As the years went on, when his parents hosted balls and gatherings, Sirius started to go along with it quietly. He didn’t have the energy to climb out his window like he used to, because he knew the punishment he’d face when he got back.

So instead he dressed up and danced with them.

It was this that made James worry. It was odd, because usually people fretted over the bruises and scars on Sirius’s back, but James was the opposite. He worried about the  _lack_  of bruises, about the calm acquiescence that Sirius had seemed to grow into.

“Sirius, you have to get out of there,” James said finally one day. Sirius shook his head, feeling the bone-deep weariness creep back in. Not that it had ever really left.

“Not worth it,” he said. Exhaustion was the only emotion he could manage, even though it could barely be classified as an emotion.

“Sirius,” James said, and he was more frantic than Sirius had ever seen. “Please run away. Don’t you see what they’re doing to you?”

“They aren’t doing anything,” Sirius said, but there was no fight in his voice. “They haven’t hurt me in ages.”

“Because you don’t fight back!”

Sirius shrugged. James clenched his fists.

“For fuck’s sake,” he ground out, looking away from Sirius. “I barely even know you anymore.”

And maybe it was those words that finally broke him, because that night he ran. He showed up at James’s at half-past midnight.

“You came,” James whispered, smiling at him, and Sirius smiled back.

It took him less than a week to rediscover himself — it wasn’t hard with James planning new pranks at every hour of the day and night, running all over and excitedly showing Sirius a new spell he’d designed.

And it wasn’t only that. Everything about James’ house was different than his in a way that made Sirius  _want_ to laugh and smile again, in a way that he’d almost entirely lost when he was shut inside his own room.

James’s parents treated Sirius as one of their own children, scolding him when they found a dungbomb in the living room or when they showed up to dinner to find Sirius and James covered in some unknown substance.

At James’s house it was like he was free all over again, and he breathed it in with a satisfaction he hadn’t felt in forever.


	27. Studying

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry likes to help Draco study.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Shouldn't you be with her?
> 
> (Pairing: Harry Potter/Draco Malfoy)

“Hey,” Harry said, sliding into the chair across from Draco. He’d been collapsed on a pile of books, sprawled across the desk in an array of desperation. “Still studying?”

Draco raised his head from the pages, hair getting stuck in between one of the pressed pages. He groaned, pulling himself free and yawning. It was still a shock to see Harry sitting across from them like they were friends. They were, according to Harry.

“Finals are in three weeks!” Draco exclaimed, flailing his hands. “I have to study.”

“I know, Hermione’s in a panic,” Harry muttered, smiling up at him in that way that Draco wished wouldn’t make his stomach twist just so.

**“Shouldn’t you be with her?”**

Harry gave him an odd look.

“Why?”

“Oh, you know, she’s your friend, you could help her —”

“Draco, shut up. You’re my friend.”

Twist, flip.

“Now, are you going to let me study with you or not?”

“I —” Draco swallowed. He was still smiling, in that way he did after a Quidditch match when he’d grin over at Draco, looking like he was still on his broom with the wind flooding through his hair.

It had been like that in the beginning. He’d school his face carefully around Draco in the corridors, but everything would come loose during Quidditch. It would all slip away, and then he would smile and grin, flashing in the sun.

Now he threw smiles at Draco carelessly, not bothering to think it through first.

Draco tentatively pushed his transfiguration book over to Harry, who took it with a grandiose gesture.

“Okay. Watford’s third theory of transfiguration?”

Draco ran a hand frustratedly through his hair, squeezing his eyes tight.  _Third law, third law._

He scrunched up his nose in concentration and then let out a frustrated huff. He knew the first and the second, but the third?

He looked up to find Harry watching him with a tiny smile on his face.

“What?”

“Nothing. You just — you always do that when you’re focusing.”

“Do what?” Draco asked, already entirely distracted by the little smile on Harry’s face.

“This,” Harry said, scrunching up his own nose in an imitation of Draco.

Flip. Twist.

“Shut up, Potter,” he muttered, and Harry laughed at him, pulling a chair over and flipping to the third law of transfiguration.

“There it is,” he pointed at the page, running his finger down the list.

They sat there for around an hour while Draco worked on scratching out transfiguration notes, with Harry quizzing him and doodling little pictures on the sides of his paper, despite Draco’s muttered protests.

Finally, when the last of the students had trickled out of the library, Draco felt a soft pressure on his shoulder. It was Harry, fallen asleep, eyes closed and breathing comfortingly even.

Draco couldn’t resist it.

“You’re adorable,” he whispered under his breath, because Harry was asleep. Harry wouldn’t hear him. He couldn’t resist with the way Harry’s hair was spilling over his shoulder, with how entirely unguarded he seemed.

Harry stirred and Draco froze. He wanted to stand and run and take back everything he’d said, because if Harry had heard him… if Harry was actually awake… it didn’t bear thinking about.

And then Harry whispered, “So are you,” and closed his eyes again, that tiny smile back on his face.

Draco stomach nearly flipped out of his body at that, but he felt Harry’s smile reflected on his own face.

_So are you._


	28. Relearn Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Remus refuses to be shut out, not after all this time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Sirius gets out of Azkaban and tries to shut Remus out
> 
> (Pairing: Sirius Black/Remus Lupin)

There was a knocking at the door. Sirius already knew who it was, even though he could no longer recognize the weight or pattern. Too many years spent in prison.

“Remus,” he sighed, opening the door to that infuriatingly familiar half-smile.

“Sirius.” His tone was indecipherable, and his face just as placid.

“I told you not to come back, so what are you doing here?”

Remus snorted, stepping over the threshold and wiggling out of his jacket. “Oh, I just thought I’d take a look at the house. You know I love architecture.”

“Do you?” Sirius furrowed his brow, trying not to let annoyance creep in as Remus hung his coat on the stand like it was his house too.

“No, you prat. I wanted to see you.”

“I know what you meant,” Sirius snapped, suddenly wishing he didn’t feel so weak, longing for his bravado of before.

“Are you going to invite me in, then? Or did Azkaban take all your manners too?”

“Shut up.” Sirius wanted to be annoyed that Remus was making Azkaban into a joke, but something in the way Remus said it only left him relieved. “In any case, you seem to have invited yourself in just fine.”

“Very funny,” Remus said, and started walking down the hallway, trailing his knuckles over the wallpaper that Sirius had always hated. “Tea?”

“Are you asking if I want tea in my own house?”

“Yes.”

Sirius let out a huff of frustration, and he could almost see his breath because of the dust swirling through the air. He jogged after Remus, who was already standing in the kitchen.

“Why are you here?”

Remus merely hummed merrily, and gestured to the couch. “Sit down while I make tea,” he grinned. “We have plenty of time to talk.”

Sirius sat down grudgingly, and the sofa felt different even though he’d sat on it a million times. He knew from experience that Remus wouldn’t leave without putting up a fight.

“I’ll take —”

“One spoon of sugar and no milk,” Remus murmured, turning around with a steaming cup of tea. “I know.”

Sirius frowned.

Remus smiled.

“Just tell me why you’re here,” Sirius said eventually, too tired to keep being annoyed.

“Because you’re being stupid.”

“And you had to visit to tell me that?”

“Shut up and listen, will you?” Remus was running his knuckles agitatedly against each other now, and he took a seat on the sofa by Sirius. Gingerly, as though he thought it might break. “All of this is ridiculous.”

Sirius bristled and opened his mouth, but Remus forestalled him with a finger. 

“Don’t. Listen, we used to be best friends, and I’m not going to throw that away because you’re a stubborn git.”

“I’m not who I used to be,” Sirius said finally, the words he’d already hurled at Remus more than enough times. 

“I don’t care.”

“Why is this so important to you? Why don’t you give it up? You have plenty of other friends.” 

“Why are you so adamant in pushing me away? I like you, Sirius. I  _want_ to be your friend.”

“For Merlin’s sake,” he said finally, closing his eyes and pushing back against the couch. “You’re insufferable. You don’t know me anymore, I’m not who I was.”

“Then let me get to know you.”

Sirius threw up his hands, a surrender he’d known would come all along.

“Fine.”

“Really?”

“Really. Fine. Come to lunch tomorrow, and you can get to know me.”

At that, Remus gave him a full smile - not half, not a quarter, but a full smile, one that lit up his entire face.

Maybe, Sirius thought, this wasn’t an awful idea after all.


	29. Bonfire

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Color the flames, warm his heart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Wolfstar + Rainbows + Campfire
> 
> (Pairing: Remus Lupin/Sirius Black)

“When I said campfire, I didn’t mean a bonfire big enough to burn down the whole forest!” Remus said, looking at the blaze Sirius had started, appalled.

“Well, what did you mean? It’s not like I was going to make some stupid little fire!”

“But —”

“You’re a wizard, Remus, lighten up,” Sirius grinned. “We won’t burn down the forest.”

Remus muttered something under his breath that sounded suspiciously like  _I wouldn’t put it past you,_ but he sat down anyways.

They had to sit a good distance away from the fire because of its size, sending waves of heat out towards them in a way that was pleasant and slightly ominous at the same time. But Sirius would take all the heat he could get. He wasn’t sure if it would quite warm his soul, still half stuck in a block of icy bars from the cell, but he would welcome any attempt.

There were sparks jumping around, flitting here and there like they were alive or they at least wanted to be, jumping in fits of danger and excitement.

“I was planning on roasting marshmallows,” Remus murmured, his mouth ticking up at the side like he was suppressing a smile, “But considering your affinity for pyromaniac-like tendencies, I think we would end up turning them into lumps of char.”

“There’s nothing more delicious than that,” Sirius grinned, and then grabbed the marshmallows from Remus. “Whatever, they’re better like this, anyways. Why would you roast them when you can eat them raw?”

“You’re ridiculous,” Remus smiled, holding his hands out to the fire to keep them warm.

“Because I can be,” Sirius grinned, popping another marshmallow in his mouth and leaning back to consider the fire. “D’you reckon we can turn the fire different colors?”

Remus sighed, still grinning, the flickering light eerie in its unpredictability. 

“Where did appreciating nature for how it is go?” he laughed. “Natural beauty? Ever heard of that?”

“But imagine if it was  _green,”_ Sirius insisted, staring at the fire with wide eyes. “Come on, a little bit of color? A  _splash_?”

“Oh, for Merlin’s sake you heathen, fine.” He pulled out his wand, and with a subtle flick and an intense look of concentration, the flames jumped into their array of colors that spilled over in a rainbow.

“Oh,” Sirius whispered, “That’s beautiful.”

Remus gave a little mock bow before sitting back to admire his handiwork. “At least now, if the forest goes up in flames, it will be rainbow flames.”

“Now  _that’s_ an idea!” Sirius grinned.

“No. We are  _not_ setting the forest on fire. No way.”

“You’re such a buzzkill,” Sirius grumbled but he sat back and smiled. “This world isn’t so bad, is it?”

The moon hung above then, glistening and far from full, adding to the rainbow and hazy through the colored smoke. Remus glanced up at it, the down to the fire, then back to Sirius.

“No,” Remus agreed, looking over at Sirius, at the rainbow spilling over him, lighting up his face in a whirl of colors. He looked beautiful like this, excitement oozing out of him as he stared at the jumping flames, clapping his hands with a childlike enthusiasm. “It really isn’t.”


	30. Sunset

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The sun sets somewhere, but rises in another world.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Wolfstar + sunset
> 
> (Pairing: Remus Lupin/Sirius Black)

“This is ridiculous,” Sirius groaned as they trudged to the park with a basket swinging between them. “A sunset? Of all things?”

“Have you ever just sat and watched the sun set?” Remus asked pointedly. The park was a beautiful kind of dark — indigo and perfect, the sprawling lawn decorated with shadows that made shapes like clouds, turning into whatever figures you wanted them to be.

“Fine,” Sirius conceded with a huff of exasperation he didn’t really feel. “You win.”

“I know I do,” Remus smirked, and he lay down the blanket in the middle of the stretch of glass, sinking down onto it and crossing his legs. Sirius sat down next to him and pulled his legs up to his chest, feeling oddly content and wondering if this could be what happiness felt like.

The sun was slowing creeping lower in the sky, steadily sinking, beautiful against the backdrop and otherworldly in a way that Sirius had to admit was worth it.

“Do you come here often?” he asked Remus, eyes still trained on the sun, despite Remus’s warnings that it wasn’t good to look straight at the sun.

“Not often.” He shrugged, turning back to the sky to watch the colors paint a picture. Everything was perfect, and he finally understood why watching the sunset had become a cliché, because who wouldn’t want to witness this? The object that provided all the light to their lives was sinking below the horizon, like it was a stone in the pool, disappearing, like it would never rise again.

It would though.

It gave Sirius chills, and he leaned closer to Remus, seeking out the steadfast presence of another body.

“Okay?” Remus asked, voice tinged with something akin to concern, but mellowed down by the streaks in the sky.

“I — yeah,” Sirius murmured. “It’s hard to see the sun disappear you know, because I went so long without it and — and what if it never comes back?”

“Oh, Sirius,” Remus whispered, and he scooted over so that their sides were pressed together, a warmth that even the sun could never provide. “It’ll come back, I promise you.”

“Sometimes it doesn’t feel like it. Sometimes…sometimes it feels like it never did. I can’t even trust the sun anymore, how pathetic is that?”

He shook his head and looked away, instead trying to find the beauty in the shadows that he’d seen before, but it was only darkness now, no matter how hard he looked.

“Hey,” Remus said, and Sirius could hear the frown in his voice. “You listen to me. That’s nothing even close to pathetic. You survived eleven years with some of the most horrifying creatures to exist on this earth, and somehow you’re still sane and alive and here.”

“I know,” Sirius whispered. “I know that in theory.”

“It’s going to be okay,” Remus whispered. “Maybe there’s a war, maybe things feel impossible, but we’re here, aren’t we?”

“Yeah,” Sirius said, uncertain but at least he was present. “I guess so.”

Remus looked back up at the sky, the sun only a sliver now, with light flooding everywhere and swamping Remus with a side-lit glow.

Sirius shuddered. 

“The sun’s almost gone,” he said, drawing their attention back to the sky. “I don’t want it to be, I really don’t.”

“It’s only gone for us,” Remus whispered, nudging his leg slightly. “Somewhere on the other side of the world, the sun’s rising for them, you know? And soon enough it will set for them and come back to us.”

Sirius looked over at him, his expression almost indecipherable in the light.

“Thank you,” he whispered, leaning closer to Remus and reveling in the rays that streaked across his face, dancing over the scars. The sun that would set and then rise, a circle, a cycle, always coming back to them.

Always there.


	31. Not Malfoy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Draco is Harry's anchor when things start to crumble.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Ron discovers Harry and Draco, Harry has anxiety
> 
> (Pairing: Harry Potter/Draco Malfoy)

“Oi! Are you  _kidding_ me? _”_

Harry froze against Draco, hands wrapped treacherously around his neck, still tangled in the hair — it felt like far too much effort to extract them, and he was quite certain he’d collapse if he did.

 _“_ For Merlin’s sake, _”_ Harry felt Draco mutter, his breath breezing over Harry in a way that he wasn’t sure he’d ever get used to.

“Bloody hell, what —what’re you doing?” Ron asked again, even though it was plain as day. Harry could tell by the shift in Draco’s posture that he could feel Harry’s heart pounding against his in a thrumming beat, anxious, erratic. He carefully moved away from Harry — to give him space? To deny what was clearly there? Harry wasn’t sure, but the world was starting to spin.

“I… Ron, it’s — it’s not, Ron, look, I can —” Harry stammered his way through a response, unable to form even a single complete sentence. He wanted to be closer to Draco and as far away as possible at the same time, wanted to smell his cologne because it was familiar, but knew it would clog his senses and only exacerbate it.

“Don’t leave me,” Harry settled for whispering, so quiet that he knew Draco wouldn’t hear it, but it made him feel better anyway.

“You were bloody snoggingMalfoy!”

Draco stirred then, understanding that Harry wasn’t in the best place to respond.

“Listen, Weasley,” he started, trying to keep his voice even. Even so, Ron was having none of it.

“Don’t speak to me,” he snarled, face contorting as he looked at Draco. “Don’t you bloody speak to me as if everything is okay now that the war is over.”

Draco frowned, but didn’t speak again.

Ron was still standing there, looking at Harry as though he had never seen him before.

“On its own, this is one thing,” he hurled at Harry, “But you’re cheating on my sister!I didn’t get mad at you for dating her, and  _this_ is what you run off to do? This is how you bloody repay everything she’s given to you?”

“Weasley!” Draco interjected sharply, cutting through his rant. Harry was annoyed and grateful that Draco was talking for him, an awful combination of emotions, stomach roiling over the fact that he couldn’t manage to do even the simplest of things.

“ _I told you not to speak to me,”_ Ron hissed, glaring at Harry all the while.

“I’ll stop speaking as soon as  _you_  stop accusing your friend of things he didn’t do.”

“Things he didn’t do? Are you going to try to pretend he didn’t just snog you? For Merlin’s sake!” Ron cried incredulously, letting out a bark of humorless laughter.

“Yes, he snogged me, because he’s free to do whatever he wants!” Draco huffed impatiently, “I’m not denying that!”

“Then what —” Ron started angrily, but Draco cut him off.

“ _Will you fucking let me talk?_ He isn’t dating Ginny. He never cheated on anybody. He can date whoever he wants, even if that so happens to be me.”

Ron just stood there, mouth openening and closing without a sound coming out.

“Look, you’re obviously not going to believe a word I say, even if I do explain it. Go ask your sister.” Ron looked for a minute like he was about to argue, immediately angry at the fact that Draco was giving him orders. But then he just spun around and stalked off.

Harry let out a breath that sounded suspiciously like a sob, and Draco gently slid down so that they were both sitting against the wall.

“Are you okay?”

Harry almost laughed at the question, but it came out in a choking noise.

“Why am I like this? Why can’t I just be like I was before the war?” He gasped for breath, something to restore the proper words to his lungs so he’d have a chance to explain, but they never came.

“I don’t know,” Draco said. He looked at the floor. “I don’t know.”

“I just can’t stop panicking,” Harry said, trying to speak even though his voice was still coming out hoarse and uneven. “I’m sorry. _”_

“Don’t apologize,” Draco said briskly. “It isn’t your fault. You’ve defeated Voldemort —” Harry almost smiled at the fact that he said Voldemort instead of the dark lord, “— and if you can do that, you’ll get through this.”

“I’m just so messed up,” Harry sighed.

“Welcome to the world,” Draco scoffed. “I don’t know anybody who isn’t.”

They sat there in silence, both looking at the floor for a minute. Harry snuck a glance at Draco, who just smiled back at him and laughed.

“What’s so funny?”

“Nothing,” he said. “It’s just, you went through a war. It isn’t surprising that you’re so anxious.”

Harry scoffed, pressed his toe into the crack, and looked over at Draco fully this time.

“Thanks, anyways,” Harry said, dragging his foot along the tiles.

“I didn’t do anything,” Draco shrugged.

“You talked to Ron.”

Draco shrugged again.

“He’ll understand, you know?” Draco said. “He was mostly angry because of Ginny, I think.”

“I should tell people Ginny and I aren’t together, shouldn’t I.”

“You don’t have to.” Draco shrugged again. He did that a lot, throwing things off like they didn’t matter in the grand scheme of things. “People can think what they want.”

Harry nodded and let his head fall to his knees, working through the last of the jitters that still ran through his body.

Beside him, he felt Draco’s hand close over his own. Anchoring him.

Keeping him still. Keeping him there.


	32. The War Rages On

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes it feels like the war has taken everything.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Post-Azkaban Wolfstar
> 
> (Pairing: Sirius Black/Remus Lupin)

“We’re a right pair, aren’t we? You’re a werewolf and I’m a convicted murderer. Not exactly what you’d call an ideal couple.”

“Depends on your definition of ideal,” Remus said, trying to make the words float into a joke, but it came out all wrong. It had been far too long since he could will away their problems with a well placed quip.

Now it was just ironic, merely emphasizing how steely and broken the rest of the world was.

Sirius didn’t seem to find the joke worth responding to either.

“Who do you think will be next?” he asked, turning away from the wall to face Remus, and his words were clear even over the creaking pipes of Grimmauld Place.

“Sirius…” The name burned against his lips, too old and worn.

“Probably our next best friend,” Sirius said, voice hollow as the flickering light above, swimming in and out of reality. “It seems like Death is just running down the list, doesn’t it? So many choices. So many people.”

“Sirius.” He forced the word out again.

“Who will it be?” Sirius snarled, stepping closer to Remus now. It was a pacing step that pushed him against the wall with a force of a magnet, like merely being in his space was enough to propel Remus backwards.

There were no sparks anymore, no wonder in his eyes and heat in his gaze. The only fire was jumping behind his retinas, and emotion he might have labeled as anger if he thought Sirius could still feel such emotions.

“Who’s next?”

For the first time, Remus didn’t want the press of Sirius’s skin against his own. He wanted to escape the dementor-infused touch, the one that still ached of everything gone wrong.

“Lily James? Oh wait, they’re already dead. And it was my fault”

It felt horribly like one of Remus’s nightmares, living this time, playing out in front of him. It felt like a different life, so set away from the monotony of his pacing and listening to Dumbledore speak.

“Is this what you’ve spent the last twelve years doing?” Remus shot at him, straightening up, a fire blazing through his flesh. “Feeling sorry for yourself?”

He let out a hollow laugh, and the hoarse sound rattled through Remus’ skull. “You think I could  _feel_  in that place?”

“I didn’t —”

“You didn’t mean it,” Sirius finished it for him, an echo of his broken laugh still resounding in his voice. “It doesn’t matter. Some days, I still can’t feel.”

 _This is one of those days, isn’t it._ Remus wanted to ask, but it wasn’t a question, really. He could tell from the way there was no fight left in him, as though the dementors had already sucked out his soul.

“What are we going to do?” Remus whispered, because even after everything, Sirius still felt like the one who could take his words.

“We’re going to live,” Sirius said, matter of fact and hard. “And then, we’re going to die. That’s all it is, all there ever is. You and me, life and death, war and no peace. It’s over, you see?”

Remus wanted to scream, wanted to say  _no, I don’t see,_ but there were footsteps pounding up the stairs. Another Order meeting to go to, another battle to fight.

Another day, another war, another death.

Maybe Sirius was right.

_We’re going to live. And then, we’re going to die._


	33. Storyteller

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Remus likes to tell stories, and Sirius likes to watch him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: “I think you misunderstood. It wasn’t a prompt. I was talking about you.”
> 
> (Pairing: Sirius Black/Remus Lupin)

“I am now taking requests!” Remus cried with a sweeping bow, standing on the table, which creaked alarmingly underneath him. He stared around at the cheering common room. “Anybody? Anybody? Prompts? Requests?”

“Ghost story!” someone called out, and a swooping wave of enthusiasm went up from the crowd.

“At midnight!” Marlene chimed in, pressing closer against Dorcas, and Remus cracked his knuckles. He grinned down at them all and started to speak.

“Okay. It was the dead of night, so quiet that a snapping twig would alert everyone to your presence from miles around.”

Sirius watched Remus from where he was perched on the sofa, legs crossed underneath him and melting into the cushions. He loved when Remus got like this, when he jumped up on the common room table and told stories with sweeping gestures, like he wasn’t afraid of anything the world could throw at him.

It was always after the full moon, when he wanted to live life as fully as he could and forget about the scars that tried to tell him otherwise. He wanted to make other people smile, so he would entertain story requests from everyone who threw them his way.

People around the common room loved it too, watching enraptured as the hair flopped in his eyes and he gestured to match his tales. They leaned in all around him, terrified as he wound stories of creaking staircases and howling werewolves.

“And then,” Remus whispered, his voice hushed, the common room even quieter. “And then, a great black dog came bounding out of the woods. An omen — of  _death.”_ He sent a subtle wink in Sirius’s direction when he said that, finishing his story with a grand flourish.

The common room burst into another round of cheering, and Remus bubbled over with laughter, his eyes still locked directly on Sirius.

“Any more prompts? Ideas? What story do you want to hear next?”

At that moment, watching his glowing eyes and enthusiastic gestures, watching the way he reveled in his stories and making people smile, Sirius couldn’t keep it in a moment longer.

“I love you,” he blurted out, still staring fixedly at Remus.

“A romance story?” Remus laughed, shaking out his hands as though preparing. “Okay, then. Once upon a time —”

“No,” Sirius interrupted, flushing and looking at anywhere but Remus,  **“I think you misunderstood. It wasn’t a prompt. I was talking about _you.”_**


	34. To Escape

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry has a chance to escape from this post-Voldemort world, and he doesn't know what to do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: dark au  
> Pairing: Harry Potter/Draco Malfoy

Harry can barely breathe. He opens his eyes. There’s a warm curl at the back of his mind, like the smell of Molly’s cooking, so warm, so welcoming. He lets his thoughts wander towards it. It whispers to him in Hermione’s comforting voice.

_Stand up,_ it says, so softly, piling blankets around his mind. Harry smiles softly and complies. Somewhere else in his mind there’s an alarm flashing, but he’s too tired to fight it. This feels right, why would he argue against this syrupy warmth in his thoughts?

A figure steps into the room. He’s tall, sharp features and blond hair. He looks regal as he stands with formal black robes drawn up to his neck. His sleeves are pinned at the elbows, a sliver from there to the creamy white of his inner elbow wide enough to reveal the black press of the mark.

Harry looks at it, but he’s still absorbed in the floating warmth that rushes through him.

_Come here._

Harry is so sleepy, and he lets the voice take over so he can rest.

Malfoy is wearing an expression with a hint of  _other._ It’s been there since the beginning. Since he tried to flee, since he was caught. He has the signature mark of ship jumpers, people who tried to escape — a red line struck across his wrists. A warning of kind, one that says  _I could have slit your wrists._

It’s Voldemort’s way of warning.

Voldemort. The word shakes the  _warning_ part of Harry’s mind, and he starts, he jumps up.

He tries to struggle against it, and Malfoy looks oddly pleased.

And then the voice comes again.

Harry knows Malfoy’s in charge of controlling him — one of Voldemort’s right-hand minions now. But Malfoy has kept his orders purposely vague, always in a way that Harry can slip past.

Now, they aren’t vague.

_A dementor is down,_ the voice says. It isn’t a command. It’s telling him. Almost — warning him.  _There’s a gap in the guards. I can help momentarily remove the enchantments, and you’re going to have to run. You can escape now. I can cover._

Harry’s surprised he’s even alive still.

The voice is still whispering. It sounds ragged, even inside his head. It sounds like Malfoy hasn’t talked in days. Months, even. Maybe he hasn’t.

_Follow me._

Harry does. He isn’t sure if it’s because he realizes Malfoy is — miraculously — trying to help him, or if it’s because it’s so easy to listen to the voice and walk towards it, to follow the trail left in honeyed syllables that caress the back of his mind.

They’re side by side now, and Malfoy keeps shooting glances at him. He looks hunted. There’s no other word for it, no reason he  _wouldn’t_ look hunted. This world Voldemort has created is one of hunting, one of predator and prey and wondering when you’re going to be caught, wondering when you’ll be the next on his list.

The muggles are in a breakdown. There towns are being destroyed. Purity of blood. They’re being completely wiped out of the world — the muggleborns are locked in cages, the squibs already gone. Harry hadn’t ever thought he’d mourn the death of Argus Filch, but that was  _before_.

Now, everything is measured in before and after. Before Voldemort. After Voldemort.

They’re in the  _after_.

Harry and Malfoy aren’t enemies anymore — it’s useless to be enemies with other prey. They’re all in the same sinking boat now.

_Faster._ The voice rings in the back of his mind.  _We can still get out._

Harry isn’t sure if he believes it, but the sound is comforting — the voice, the words, all of it. The fact that it’s Malfoy, somehow, makes it even more comforting. Malfoy, who has carefully re-worded all his orders, even when Voldemort tells him to torture Harry. Malfoy, who was ordered to put Harry under the Imperius in the first place, who made it low-grade so it’s easier to disobey than most.

But Harry trusts Malfoy’s orders. Harry trusts Malfoy with his life.

They’re breaking into a full on sprint now — Malfoy is grabbing at Harry’s hand, trying to get him to move faster, because Malfoy’s legs are longer, more powerful.

There’s a rippling tear in the fabric of the magic, as though Malfoy has rent a hole through every layer, through every charm meant to curdle your insides and every guard and dementor standing path. Malfoy pushes Harry towards it.

_Go,_ he says.  _It will collapse once you’re through._

The words make Harry woozy with a thrill, because he can  _escape_  now. He can get out.

Then the words register further, and he realizes what Malfoy has said. He understands with a sudden burst that there’s only room enough for  _one_ to escape.

_Go,_ Malfoy says. Harry turns to him. He can’t let Malfoy stay behind. Malfoy seems to sense what he’s thinking.  _It won’t let me through, I have the Mark._

Harry looks at the wall, at the shimmering veil. He looks back at Malfoy, who’s a combination of sad and happy, like he  _wants_ Harry to escape so badly that his own fate doesn’t matter much.

Harry looks at the hole and turns away. He can’t leave Malfoy. He knows that now.

So he uses all the energy left in him to fight off the imperius curse. Malfoy is using it stronger then ever, his thoughts a stream of  _go, go, go, go._

Harry can’t.

He shakes his head at Malfoy, and he can almost feel tears in his own eyes. He can’t leave Malfoy alone, Malfoy who already has two bright red strikes across his arms, the mark of on-thin-ice-soon-to-be-dead.

He can’t leave Malfoy in this place where Voldemort keeps all the magical folk, sealed off from the rest of the world, all magic under his control. Harry knows how hard it must have been for Malfoy to make this tear in the wall. He knows it probably would have failed anyways, that he probably would have been caught. That maybe he’d have strikes on his wrists too.

And he doesn’t run.

He hugs Malfoy instead, and whispers in his ear.

“I’m not going until we can both be free.”


	35. Reborn

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry has to save Draco, because for some reason, he won't stop dying.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: time travel  
> Pairing: Harry Potter/Draco Malfoy

The first time Draco Malfoy died, the sky was an eerie bloodred that was almost ironic. Taunting him. The color of the life trailing slowly from his veins.

He couldn’t move — the body bind curse did its work. All he could do was stare up at the sky, watching the meandering of the clouds — there was no sense of urgency in the world, no mark that he was dying. He stared up at the sky until the vision was gone from his eyes.

The first time Draco Malfoy was reborn, Harry was staring down at him with a look on his face that almost seemed guilty.

“I died,” was all Malfoy could seem to say.

“I suppose so,” was Harry’s response. He tucked something inside the neck of his cloak and turned away, before turning back. “Er — your attacker has been apprehended. I…don’t mention this to anyone, okay? And take care not to die again.”

And then he was gone.

 

The second time Draco Malfoy died, the sky was black and he was swamped by the Revival Death Eaters, as they called themselves.

_“Traitor!”_ they screamed into the dark, cloaks flapping like giant bats, masks shaped out of human skin, “ _Betrayal!”_

That time, dying was easy — black to black, night sky to nothingness, Death Eaters to Death.

The second time Draco Malfoy was reborn, Harry was staring down at him again, and hourglass winking around his neck, the chain glinting silver in the moonlight.

“I died again,” Malfoy said. He was almost unsurprised this time, almost disappointed he was back.

“So you did,” Harry sighed. He glanced behind him. “I’m not supposed to bring you back. You have to stop dying.”

Malfoy laughed up at him. “Everyone else wants me to,” he said, and the laugh rang hollow. Harry just stared down at him. “Don’t you?”

“No. I don’t.”

He was gone once more, spiraling out of existence like he’d been merely another star in the sky.

 

The third time Draco Malfoy died, he nearly laughed aloud. The sky was bright blue, and there was a slow-acting poison trickling through his veins, eating away at his muscles and organs from the inside out. He wasn’t sure who’d poisoned him. There were too many possibilities, but pain was pricking at every inch of him — the cruciatus curse put on slow mode, jolting through him.

As he died, ever so slowly, he looked up at the azure of the sky.

“I’ll see you soon Potter,” he muttered. He didn’t really believe it.

The third time Draco Malfoy was reborn, his words came true. Harry Potter pulled him to his feet and led him into his flat, which was sprawling with enough trash that it felt like he lived in a dump.

Draco looked around at it all with a snort and cleaned it up with a flick of his wand. Harry murmured a thanks, and pushed a cup of tea into his hands.

“You have to stop dying,” he insisted. “I might not be around to save you next time.”

“Okay,” Malfoy said. “I’ll do my best.”

“I’ve died before too,” Harry said suddenly. “When Voldemort tried to kill me. I saw Dumbledore again, and he told me I had the option to — to  _go on_ or to come back, and I had to come back. Voldemort was still out there.”

“Do you ever wish you hadn’t?”

Draco wasn’t sure why Harry was telling him this, but he didn’t mind it. They had always been strangely similar, in their opposing ways.

“Hadn’t come back?” Harry paused and sighed. “Sometimes.”

 

The fourth time Draco Malfoy died, he couldn’t see the sky. It was a letter bomb that he hadn’t been careful enough to check for. Or perhaps he’d been too tired — everything took so much more energy than it had before. He watched the Manor disappear around him.

The fourth time Draco Malfoy was reborn, he was in Harry Potter’s flat once more. There was a newspaper open on the table, a coffee stain spilled across it.

THE BOY WHO LIVED — TO BE GAY?

Underneath was a picture of Harry pushed up against a wall in some muggle club. Draco recognized the place. He’d been there before.

Draco gestured to the picture with a dry laugh.

“Was that recent?” he asked, and Harry rolled his eyes.

“They can’t seem to leave me alone,” he sighed.

“Well, another thing we have in common,” Malfoy said with a snort, and Harry looked at him oddly, head tilted to the side.

“What, that the papers can’t leave us alone, or that I’m gay?”

“Both,” Draco shrugged, and Harry looked away.

 

The fifth time Draco Malfoy died, the sky was grey. It was poison again — snuck into his morning coffee.

The fifth time Draco Malfoy was reborn, Harry was staring down distastefully at the cup of coffee.

“Let me buy you a better one,” he said.

“Are you asking me out?” Draco asked.

Harry shrugged. The time turner was still hanging heavy around his neck, and Draco’s death was still there around them, in this very house. Draco wasn’t sure why he kept dying, or why he kept needing to be saved. All he knew was that Harry Potter had asked him out for coffee.

 

The sixth and final time Draco Malfoy died, he was ninety years old. He was buried next to Harry Potter, as they’d both requested:  _til death do us part._

Draco Malfoy wasn’t reborn this time, but somewhere in the afterlife, he was content.


	36. Colors

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> His world revolved around colors.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Colors  
> Pairing: Sirius Black/Remus Lupin

Remus’s life revolved around colors. He wasn’t sure why, but it was the first thing he noticed everywhere. When he stepped outside all he could see was a palette of shades — the white-to-blue gradient of the sky, the dried-bone-yellow of waving wheat stalks, the olive-pine-green of the trees.

It was all he could see for miles, swathes of color that clashed and matched and took over the world.

At first, he’d loved colors. Every color, every shade, a unique piece of the world. But as he grew older, it became a curse.

It started when he was  _transformed,_ when all of a sudden everything was so much brighter, so much more  _there._

And then almost everything clashed. It was the blue-yellow-green of the outdoors that was far too different. He wished the colors were cohesive. He wished they matched — he yearned for the world to be a perfect mix.

So he’d stay in his room most days, staring at the grey walls and grey sheets and grey carpets, breathing in the unity of it all. The world felt even, there — black sky, white prinpick stars, grey room, greying shadows. It was everywhere, and it was perfect.

It was when he got to Hogwarts that things started to fall apart.

It wasn’t just the house colors — although those were bad enough, with the maroon-not-red and glaringly-bright-gold of Gryffindor on all sides of him.

It was also the color of magic and the color of classrooms and posters and everywhere-he-looked-a-new-color.

It was an overload, shutting down his brain, because he wanted all the colors to match, and it was the only thing he seemed able to focus on.

The more he tried not to think about it, the more he thought about it, until the entire world was a swirl of colors that were somehow the most important part of everything.

It wasn’t until Sirius that colors started to be less prominent. Sirius was good at distracting Remus. He wasn’t sure if it was intentional, but Sirius drew all his attention away from the colors.

Things seemed to fade away around Sirius, enough that Remus didn’t see the mess around him. Instead, he saw Sirius — black hair, pale skin, black jacket, white shirt. Unity unity unity.

Sirius was a different color entirely, soothing, the keystone to the world. He made everything else seem like a joke.

Sirius didn’t know about Remus’s difficulty with shades, but he didn’t seem to mind that Remus always hung around him. He would chatter on about inane things, and his  _words_  felt like colors too, soft and blending.

Sirius made things feel okay when the world felt too chaotic for its own good.

Sirius was a new color, and Remus couldn’t stay away.


	37. Seeker's Game

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry and Malfoy still both love to fly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> prompt: games  
> pairing: Harry Potter/Draco Malfoy

It wasn’t until Hogwarts that Harry realized his yearning for competition, something that could take him away from the world for a short time and be his respite when everything seemed to go wrong.

It’s eighth year, and everything’s changed except Quidditch. Ginny’s good at flying, but she doesn’t like to play seeker. Everyone else is too preoccupied. 

They think  _games_ are trivial after they’ve lived through the  _ultimate_  game, where they were all playing for their lives.

There’s only one person who flies anymore, and he’s someone who Harry has always simultaneously avoided and chased, a dichotomy of hatred and fascination he can never seem to shake.

But war changes everything. Even Harry feels  _changed._

He feels like he’s been touched by some kind of Olde Magick, because he no longer holds onto his old vendettas.

In a way, he feels bad for Malfoy.

But his feelings from the old world don’t matter when he’s flying — all that matters is the sky, the wind, the fluttering wings that are the only thing that wants to run from him, when everyone else is running towards him. Their  _Hero_.

So, when Malfoy rushes past Harry, cloak flapping in the wind, Harry isn’t reminded of the way Snape flew from the tower. He isn’t reminded of the dragon from Gringotts, or the Quidditch game where Dobby hit him with a bludger.

All he can think is  _competition._

“Malfoy!” he screams out, hoping the wind will carry his voice. “Seeker’s Game!”

Maybe Malfoy’s affected by the same intensity of forgetfulness, or maybe he’s shocked into submission, but he wheels his broom around to face Harry.

Harry nods to the speck of gold that’s now hovering high above the Forbidden Forest, a winking medallion.

Malfoy leans forward and Harry copies him on pure instinct, and then they’re both rocketing through the air, flying high over the forest.

When Harry looks down at the trees below him, the trunks thin and the branches reaching out to each other, forming a net of limbs that won’t let even the most resourceful of creatures through, he doesn’t think about sacrificing himself. He doesn’t thinking about the winking red stone that’s somewhere below, holding the key to his parents, to all of the  _lost_  ones.

All he thinks of is the  _game,_ all he wonders is where the snitch has gone and where Malfoy is in relation to it.

He’s flooded with it. The wind batters his eyes closed, but he doesn’t stop flying. He whistles forwards through the air, narrowly avoiding being cut off by Malfoy in his haste.

This is nothing like playing Ginny or Ron.

This is the  _game._

Harry goes faster, hand outstretched, but Malfoy knocks into him and Harry slips sideways. He looks over to see Malfoy grinning.

“Fuck off!” Harry yells in return, but the yell feels giddy, like there’s a laugh somewhere behind it, even though laughs have been stuck in his chest and locked away in a box he can’t access ever since the war.

It feels good to yell. It feels good not to worry. Malfoy doesn’t care.

Malfoy just wants to win.

He’s struck by how good Malfoy really is at flying. It’s something he never considered before, perhaps too caught up in his own success, maybe absorbed with the different model brooms that could be the reason for their abilities.

But Malfoy is good, and it feels good for Harry to worry that for once he might not win, because it pushes him further until he and Malfoy are rocketing side by side, close enough that Harry could reach out and grab onto Malfoy if he was playing foul.

Harry isn’t even sure where they are anymore.

He doesn’t think he wants to know, because that would put the world into perspective, and for now it’s him and Malfoy and the snitch.

He knows what his assigned mind-healer will say, because he’s heard it before, too many times.

_You’re ignoring what happened._

Harry agrees with her. He’s ignoring it because this is how he can live best, because he’s never felt as free as he does right now, with Malfoy whooping in front of him as he reaches out for the snitch.

Surprisingly, Harry isn’t even mad when Malfoy catches it. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he thinks perhaps he should be, but he isn’t. They tumble to the ground. They’re laughing, and it feels so wrong-right-wrong-right.

A seesaw of wrong-right until Harry remembers that the line is so far blurred from the war it’s barely a thing.

He thinks, why shouldn’t he let himself smile with Malfoy? He thinks, he deserves this. He thinks, he should be able to be happy without questioning himself.

So that’s what he does.

“Good game,” Harry says with a grin. He reaches out his hand, and Malfoy reaches out to shake it, simultaneously pressing the snitch into Harry’s hand, cool metal that makes him laugh.

“Good game to you too,” Malfoy says with a smirk-that-isn’t-mean. “Another? Only if you think you’re up to beating me, of course, which I highly doubt you are.”

“You don’t want to challenge me,” Harry replies with a bigger grin. He holds his fist high into the air, wings fluttering frantically between his fingers, and when he lets go, the gold is a blur among the clouds.

They both watch it go, a streak like a ray of sun.

Harry mounts his broom — Malfoy mounts his. They stare at each other, and then Malfoy grins, kicking off into a low hover.

“Game on,” he says, and he’s off like a bullet. Harry follows after him, and soon they’re also streaks among the sky, Malfoy’s words still echoing strong in his ears.

_Game on,_ the echo calls out to him, ringing clear.  _Game on._


	38. Stay?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Scorpius and Teddy have become friends, leaving Harry and Malfoy no other choice.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: kids  
> Pairing: Harry Potter/Draco Malfoy

After Harry Potter’s breakup with Ginny, words that had been printed thousands of times over and sent down the chain of the Wizarding community with a series of excited whispers, he’d thought kids might be out of the question. It was harder to find someone to settle down with when you were famous, it turned out. It wasn’t until Andromeda had sent him an owl that everything inside him flushed with the realization that there might still be a chance.

_Teddy_.

By now Harry knew Teddy exceptionally well, and standing at the park watching him play on the slide, he felt surprisingly gratified.

He was still terrified, of course — something about the fact that parents had been absent from his life, that Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon were his role models. Above all, he worried he might end up like them. That perhaps something about his childhood had been imprinted in him, that Teddy would look at him and feel nothing but fear — or perhaps, look  _back_ on him and want to erase all memories of his past.

Maybe Harry was projecting slightly, but he was still worried.

Teddy wasn’t. He wasn’t worried in the slightest. He was grinning ear to ear in that genuine way that toddlers pulled off so well, because they didn’t have a care in the world what other people thought of them.

“Hawwy!”

Harry looked over to see Teddy running back towards him, hand in hand with a small blond boy. Harry stared. It gave him such a strange throwback to his own childhood — to the blond boy whose handshake he’d refused — and he did his best to shake the image from his head. “Hawwy, wook who I met!”

Harry smiled down at the two of them, and knelt in front of the boy. “What’s your name?” he asked kindly, and the boy beamed up at him.

“Scorpius!” he said, and Harry froze with a smile on his face.

“That’s a cool name!” he managed to get out. And then. “Is your father here, by any chance?”

“Yes!” Scorpius said excitedly, and he ran back a second later with none other than Draco Malfoy in tow.

Draco was staring down at Scorpius as they walked, and murmuring to him. Harry could hear, even from afar.

“Who did you meet, Scorpius?” Malfoy asked, and his voice sounded so strangely soft, something Harry had never heard — never  _expected_ to hear, either — in his whole life.

When Malfoy looked up and met his eyes, everything tilted sideways.

“Potter,” he said smoothly, regaining his composure with the blink of an eye. “Nice to see you.”

He held out his hand, and Harry — perhaps dumbfounded by the civil reaction, or maybe because he didn’t want to set Teddy against his new friend — took his hand courteously with a small smile.

“Can I go back to Teddy’s house?” Scorpius asked excitedly. “Please, please?”

“I — er…” Malfoy seemed so unsure of himself that Harry smiled, saving him from his uncertainty.

“We’d be glad to have Scorpius,” he said kindly

“Okay,” Malfoy said finally. “You can go.”

Scorpius and Teddy both cheered.

…

The fifth time Scorpius came over, he refused to let go of Malfoy’s hand.

“Daddy, will you stay? Mr. Harry said he’s making muffins!”

Malfoy looked at Harry uncertainly, and Harry shrugged. Sheepish, almost. Embarrassed, maybe.

They sat together at the table eating muffins while Teddy and Scorpius ran around.

“Of all reasons to meet you again,” Malfoy muttered under his breath, looking over at Harry. “I never thought I’d see the day.”

“Daddy!” It was Scorpius, running over excitedly with a rock in his hand. “Look at the rock!”

Harry expected Malfoy to scoff or tell him rocks weren’t something he was supposed to play with, but Malfoy did neither of those things. He looked down at the rock that a wonder that almost looked real.

“That’s beautiful,” he said, smiling softly at Scorpius. “Can I take a look?” When Scorpius handed him the rock, Draco did a quiet spell under his breath, wand twitching in the direction of the rock.

When he handed it back to his son, the rock blinked and smiled at him, purring softly and sprouting tiny legs. Scorious jumped delightedly and ran off to show his newfound friend. Harry stared at him, open mouthed and not bothering to hide his shock.

“What?” Malfoy asked, self-conscious immediately.

“I…” Harry wasn’t sure what he was going to say. You’re nice? You’re a great father? What did you say to your former nemesis-turned-outcast-by-a-war-and-now-forced-acquaintance-who-isn’t-so-bad-anymore. “That was a neat charm.”

Malfoy shrugged and took a bit of muffin, tipping his head towards Harry after a thoughtful moment of pause.

“Not bad muffins,” he said with a small smile. “Not bad at all, Potter.”

They didn’t talk about the war. Over the coming weeks — months, as time went on — they didn’t mention it. Malfoy stayed over now when Scorpius came to visit, and sometimes they all played together. Malfoy was funny, he laughed easily, and Teddy loved him. Sometimes Teddy asked if they could all live together in one big family, a question that made Harry blush to the very roots of his hair, when he pictured Draco living with him.

One afternoon, while Teddy and Scorpius were playing happily, Andromeda arrived at the front door.

“Do you think I could take out Teddy and his friend for ice cream?” she asked, looking between Malfoy and Harry. “There’s a new place opening in Diagon Alley where Fortescue’s used to be.”

“Sure,” Harry said softly, trying not to think about the  _used_ to be.

“Why not,” Malfoy said. “Send a patronus or something when you want me to come pick him up.”

When Teddy and Scorpius had vanished happily out the door, Malfoy looked at him awkwardly and then rose to grab his traveling cloak from where it hung on the stand, looking like it belonged there.

Harry didn’t want him to go. He liked Malfoy. Perhaps more than he should. 

He watched as Malfoy reached for the door, scarf loose around his neck in a way that looked more carefree than anything. He looked at the sticker on one of his sleeves, probably from Scorpius. He looked at Malfoy when Malfoy turned back to wave, and then he breathed out. Quite — a whisper, a murmur.

“Stay?”


	39. Hearing You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Remus can hear, and suddenly it's too much.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: Angst, suicidal thoughts/feelings, unhappy ending  
> Prompt: sound  
> Pairing: Remus Lupin/Sirius Black

It’s a product of the new potion Remus has been taking in an effort to fight off his Lycanthropy — something that’s still in the testing phase, but is far better then nothing.

Being a werewolf, Remus’s sound has always been  _ever so slightly_ enhanced, but now it’s more. The potion seems to work in opposites, reducing the negative effects of being a werewolf — the painful transformation and out-of-mind experience — while at the same time, bolstering the ones that have minimal effect on anything.

So now Remus can hear exceptionally well. Every breath. Every shift. Every miniscule cricket’s chirp.

Remus has come to learn that enhanced hearing isn’t always the best thing. It’s the midst of the war — screams are louder, cries for help more piercing, pleading sticking even longer in his mind. It’s everywhere, the subtle murmurings of the war that appear around every surface, and Remus hears them all.

There are some parts of it he enjoys. There’s the calm whisper of Sirius’s voice, the tiny noises he makes when Remus has him pinned against a wall.

Everything is magnified against his will.

It’s the middle of the night when Remus is suddenly woken by a noise.

He opens his eyes — doesn’t move yet, because if it’s an intruder, he thinks it’s better to play dead. It gives him the element of surprise. But then he realizes the rustle sound is coming from right beside him, and he watches as Sirius quietly drags back the covers and slips out of bed. His feet are muffled by the carpet, but footsteps pound like drumbeats in Remus’s ears.

He doesn’t follow Sirius. He would, ordinarily, but Sirius is making a show of being quiet. He doesn’t want Remus to wake up, Remus can tell.

So he doesn’t move. He slips back into sleep eventually, his dreams twisting and making erratic leaps that he never seems to have the ability to comprehend. His thoughts are everywhere. They’ve always been like that, too much to decipher, to complicated to handle.

Except, Remus soon realizes, Sirius’s escape is every night. Something he never noticed before - but now, with his sharpened hearing, he catches every miniscule second where Sirius slips out of bed.

It isn’t for long. He stands on the balcony, perhaps, and looks out over the land. Something like that. Some moment where all he wants is solitude.

It isn’t until weeks later that Remus decides to go with him.

It’s easy to slip out of bed, faltering only slightly, and to trace the echo of sound imprinted in Sirius’s footsteps.

He finds smoking on the balcony, staring out over the land as he’d imagined night after night.

Everything is swathed in a threadbare darkness, the kind you can see right through if you take a second to adjust. Even so, the glowing end of Sirius’s cigarette is bright. A beacon, so weak and so strong, so futile. But there.

Sirius looks at him in surprise, and there’s a tear running down his cheek, crystal clear against the eerie glow of his skin.

Remus isn’t sure what to say. He’s never been good at confronting nor comforting. That’s Sirius, who digs up stacks of blankets and chocolate after the full moon, who will read to Remus for hours on end if he wants to.

“What is it?” Remus asks quietly, and Sirius shakes his head.

“The war,” he whispers. “I can’t do it anymore.”

Remus doesn’t understand at first. Thinking back over it, there are a lot of possible meanings.

“I know,” he settles for. “It’s terrible.”

“No.” Sirius is more frantic, his voice rising and falling in an uneven way that Remus has never heard. “Remus, I can’t do it anymore. I dunno, maybe I’m supposed to be brave and be a Gryffindor, but I’m not cut out for war. I can’t stand here and watch as Dorcas dies and Marlene dies and  _all our friends_  die, counting down the seconds until you die too. Until James and Lily die. I can’t have that be my life. I can’t do this Remus. I can’t wait for death any longer.

“What?”

Remus still doesn’t understand. 

“I used to watch muggle horror movies,” Sirius plows on. “I’d sneak them into my room. I was very defiant, you remember that.”

Remus doesn’t know what’s happening, but he has a feeling this isn’t a moment he’ll forget very soon.

“I would watch them and think that I couldn’t live through a horror movie. I couldn’t fight back against the monsters, because I’d rather die. I should never have been in Gryffindor. It was only because I asked. I can’t live my own horror movie, Remus, even if you’re here. I’m not cut out for this.”

“I’m not enough?” Remus asks calmly. He isn’t sure why he says it. Maybe he’s trying to guilt trip Sirius, to get him to stop talking and come back to sleep, because he doesn’t like these words and he knows Sirius will comfort him. 

Every time Remus says he’s not enough, Sirius drops everything to reassure him, to say that he’s  _always_ been enough. 

But Sirius doesn’t.

“Nothing is enough,” he whispers instead. It’s so loud against Remus’s over sensitive ears. So,  _so_ loud.

“Sirius —”

“I’m sorry, Remus,” Sirius whispers quietly, and he pushes around Remus, his footsteps  _so_  loud. When the door slams shut behind him, Remus is still standing there, staring after him in dismay and wondering when the gunshot like door is going to stop ringing in his ears, a heavy residue of noise.


	40. Corner Café

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After the war, a new café is built in Hogsmeade.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: coffee shop au  
> Pairing: Harry Potter/Draco Malfoy

Half of Hogsmeade had been destroyed during the war. A final mark from the Death Eaters, an explosion that most people read as a signpost.  _We’ll be back,_ it screamed.  _You haven’t gotten rid of us yet._

It was burnt to shards, the ground scorched and marked with black streaks that meant nothing even when you looked closely, as Harry had. They’d rebuilt parts of Hogsmeade already - the newest addition being a coffee shop with bright letters that didn’t match the ashen atmosphere around it. 

The title was blaring, the letters embellished, with a tinny look that almost reminded Harry of Madam Puddifoot’s. 

Corner Café.

It had been a part of an effort spurred on by the new mind-healers to help people relax, and it was working surprisingly well. Harry had fewer actual classes than most people; he studied alone, unable to take the atmosphere with so many people in the same place, each of them another piece of the war.

So he spent quiet study sessions in the coffee shop rather than in the library, enjoying the aroma of coffee and the calm steam that filled the air. It was warm. Thrilling. He felt at home.

It wasn’t until a few weeks in that he was joined by Draco Malfoy.

“What are you doing here?” Harry asked, jumping up. The coffee shop felt like it belonged to him, as strange as that was. “Don’t you have potions?”

Malfoy frowned at him. There was a long silence where Malfoy hovered around the table, like he wasn’t sure if he should be sitting or moving away. Harry wasn’t sure what he wanted him to do either.

Finally, he spoke.

“I was removed from the class for my safety.”

“Your safety?” Harry asked. The longer Malfoy stood there, the more uncomfortable he looked. Finally _,_ he sat down hesitantly, staring around him.

“People didn’t approve of my presence,” Malfoy said slowly. He looked away.

“People approved too much of mine,” Harry laughed drily.

“Well,” Malfoy said slowly, “I’m not sure which is worse.”

“I can’t say I am either,” Harry said. Despite his present company, he felt a tiny smile at the side of his mouth. Malfoy tilted his head curiously, and then — after a long moment — he pulled out a book from beside him.

“I —” He stood up halfway, and made a jerking motion, as if he was going to leave, but then he stopped. Looked back. “I have to study potions…”

“You can stay here,” Harry shrugged. “As long as you don’t worship me.”

“Then you’re going to refrain from hexing me?” Malfoy asked, and it sent a jolt of sadness through Harry to hear a grain of actual worry in his voice.

“The war is over, Malfoy,” Harry said quietly. He stared at Malfoy’s potions books, at what should have been the life of a normal student. Their grudges, hurled insults — all of it seemed so pathetic from here, with a layer of death lying between that time and this.

“For now,” was all Malfoy said. Harry didn’t question him further. He didn’t let opportunistic ideas shroud the future. He knew it was possible, with the Death Eaters, with the sheer amount of dark magic in the world. He knew a resurgence could happen.

“Anyway,” Harry said, looking away and trying to shove all thoughts of war to the back of his mind. “Potions?”

Malfoy smile tentatively. “Yeah,” he said. “Potions.”

The weeks went on, and Malfoy joined Harry most days. At first it was awkward, a dance of uncertainty as to whether they would sit together, long lulls of silence and only the flipping of pages to interrupt. But gradually, Harry came to think of Malfoy as a friend, almost.

Malfoy understood him. He was the other extreme, suffering through the worst of it like Harry had. There was a strange bond in their pain that made Harry feel like he didn’t have to shoulder this burden alone — and he felt no guilt in letting Malfoy share it with him.

So they sat together most days, in their quiet bubble of the coffee shop where they were practically untouchable to the rest of the world. They learned to talk, to smile. Eventually they learned to laugh.

And then they learned to talk again, beyond the superficial greetings and types of herbs. They learned to laugh again, real instead of measured. They spoke between the lines of studying, about Malfoy’s mother, about Harry’s past, about the war.

Harry came to find solace in Malfoy, in the way he despised coffee and only ever ordered hot chocolate. In the way he muttered lists while he was studying, like he had a reference table in his head.

And most of all, Harry realized that Malfoy was no longer someone to ignore. He wasn’t someone who threw random insults — if he did, they were tinged with humor that Harry was certain hadn’t been there before. Malfoy was something more.

Malfoy was a part of Harry’s life now, and he wasn’t sure he’d have it any other way.


	41. Next to You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Remus is having a bad day, but Sirius is there to make things better.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Hurt/Comfort  
> Pairing: Remus Lupin/Sirius Black

There were a million different kinds of pain, and Remus knew them all intimately — in fact, there were some days when he wondered if he’d created a whole new vocabulary for the plethora of pain he’d experienced.

Some pain fueled adrenaline in him, the spiking rush when his bones shifted and cracked in the most horrible way possible, when his skin tore apart and made him want to scream out and run, run until he’d reached the edge of the world. At those moments, he felt like it was possible to reach the edge of the world.

But this — this pain was pure torture. It was an ache that lay just below his skin, a dull never-ending throb that picked away at him second by second, that made him realize exactly how inescapable life was. These were the moments when Madam Pomfrey had to hide away all the sleep draughts. Too much is unhealthy, she’d scold him, but he’d barely hear. Voices were a dull throb as well, pain that pounded through him with every beat of his heart.

It felt so close. Some days he would try to scratch it away. He would stare down at his skin and wonder how many layers it would take for him to reach the ache.

It was the culmination of depleted adrenaline, the price he had to pay, the one he’d live with for the rest of his life. Slowly fading until the next full moon rolled around. That’s how it was, how it had always been. To live, to stay alive, that’s all there ever was.

Sirius had figured out Remus before everyone else, had learned the things that made him tick and willed away the worst of the pain.

But today was unbearable. It was a Hogsmeade visit — his luck, of course, and he couldn’t bring himself to get out of bed when he was almost certain he’d collapse once he tried.

He heard voices. James pleaded him to come, Lily tried to tempt him. He couldn’t do it. Instead, he listened as the excited chatter faded from the common room, and then he buried his head in his pillow and wondered how many breaths he would have to withold before he passed out.

He thought vaguely that maybe the pain would linger, even through his unconsciousness. It was everlasting in that way.

“Hey.” There was a voice, and Remus turned over to see Sirius standing there holding something in his arms.

“What are you doing here?” Remus frowned. Had he lost time? It wouldn’t be the first occasion that happened. Were they back from Hogsmeade already?

“Oh come off it, you didn’t really think I’d leave you alone and bugger off to Hogsmeade, did you?”

“But — but —” Remus spluttered. He couldn’t process thoughts as quickly. He wanted to tear off his skin. “Where’s James?”

“He couldn’t resist Hogsmeade,” Sirius rolled his eyes. “It’s just me. You alright?”

Remus grimaced. “Yeah.”

“Right,” Sirius snorted.

“Doesn’t matter much,” Remus said quietly, although his resolve was dwindling as the seconds ticked on and his explosive urges grew. “No difference. Still — ugh.” He buried his face in his hands, and Sirius placed a chocolate bar on his leg. Remus looked up.

“Honeydukes’ finest,” Sirius elaborated. “I got it last time, so it might not be as good as brand new, but —”

Remus didn’t care. He grabbed for it, needing something to distract him.

“Okay,” Sirius said. He plopped himself down on Remus’s bed and leaned back, dropping his head to Remus’s shoulder. Remus tried to ignore it. The warmth. The pressure. The temptation to turn and bury his head in Sirius’s hair, to wrap his arm around Sirius and never let go. “I got you a new jumper, because that one has like fifteen holes in it, and you don’t need to freeze on top of everything else.” He set the jumper on the bed next to Remus. It was soft and blue, a knit of yarn that looked more like feather than anything.

“Thanks,” Remus mumbled, overflowing with gratitude but unsure how to express it. Thanks didn’t seem adequate, but his words were replaced with pain and he couldn’t get anything else out.

“Anything specific I can do?”

Remus pulled a face. “Not really. Look, don’t waste your time with me, okay? Go join up with everyone else at Hogsmeade.”

“Don’t be stupid,” Sirius said, and his breath was so warm against Remus’s neck. He sat up. Remus mourned the loss. The pain still wormed through him, an ebb and flow that didn’t feel better even when it retreated, because he knew it would come back worse. “We’re not having this argument, for the millionth time. Now, let’s plan some brilliant way to get out of McGonagall’s assignment, yeah?”

Remus smiled. He couldn’t help it. He knew what Sirius was doing — Sirius knew him so well, knew exactly when he needed to be distracted and when he needed silence.

“You know, it would be easier to just do the assignment,” Remus told him with a tilt of his head. “I’m just saying.”

“Really?” Sirius asked. “Really, Remus? You think I’d rather do the actual work than find a way around it?”

Sirius stayed there for half an hour, detailing elaborate and impossible plans, seeking Remus’s expertise when he noticed Remus slipping off into the corner of his mind reserved for pain, one he lived in far too often. Sirius was good at drawing him out. He was one of the only people who could do it.

And when Sirius finally nodded off next to Remus, the pain felt abated somewhat, as though being in Sirius’s presence was enough to draw him out into the world of reality.

Remus covered him with a blanket and carefully moved Sirius’s head so he wouldn’t wake up with a pulled muscle. Then he lay down next to Sirius and closed his eyes. The dull throb was still there, but so was a warmth along side it. Tasting like chocolate, feeling like Sirius.

Remus fell asleep with a smile on his face.


	42. Annoyed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When people keep flirting with Malfoy, Harry gets annoyed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Annoyed  
> Pairing: Harry Potter/Draco Malfoy

Harry kicked the ground fiercely, wishing it wasn’t so unrelenting, wanting not to feel so pathetic.

“So nice to see you again, Draco!”

Harry looked away. Wanted to cover his ears, but didn’t want to seem rude or give away the simmering annoyance inside of him. There was something about the way Flint smiled at Malfoy, the way he clapped a hand to Malfoy’s shoulder and let it linger that made Harry more annoyed than he’d ever been in his life.

He walked over despite himself, pointedly turning to engage Malfoy in conversation and distract himself from that obnoxious buffoon who couldn’t seem to stop smiling at Malfoy in that way that nearly felt indecent.

“Malfoy,” he said with a stiff nod. “I’m leaving early to work on the Benningham case. I’ll see you tomorrow.” He realized a moment after he said it how ridiculous it was - they’d solved the Benningham case a week ago, as Malfoy fully knew. 

He’d be able to pass it off as his hatred of Ministry functions, if Malfoy asked.

Malfoy didn’t. He shrugged and nodded, tossing Flint an easy smile that made Harry think briefly that  _Malfoy_ was annoying too.

Harry walked out the door, letting it slam shut behind him with a resounding echo that reflected the annoyance he couldn’t seem to rid himself of.

“Why are you really leaving?” Malfoy’s voice came from behind Harry, and he hurried to catch up. They trudged through the snow because Harry was too worked up to cast a charm that would clear the way for them, and maybe because he’d been thrown off guard when Malfoy followed him. Harry sat down on the bench and took in a breath of the cold air, stinging his lungs and drying his mouth. Malfoy sat beside him.

They’d been partners for a good five years now, something Harry thought would be the death of him at the beginning, but now - although they’d never admit it - they were, in the traditional sense, friends.

“Flint was being annoying,” Harry simmered, glaring off at the streetlight that was swamping everything with an orange-red-yellow glow.

“Marcus?” Malfoy asked, raising one eyebrow. “Why, because he keeps hitting on me? I thought you didn’t have a problem with me being gay.”

“I don’t,” Harry frowned. The snow was coating his shoulders, the night dark, the streetlights bathing everything within reach. Stronger than a lumos, a warmer colored light that did nothing to abate the cold no matter how much it looked like it could. “He’s just annoying.”

“Hmm,” Malfoy frowned. “Whatever you say.”

“Do you know him well?” Harry blurted, not able to settle the churning inside him that rolled in waves.

“Are you —” Malfoy peered at Harry more closely, and then he shook his head as though banishing whatever he’d been thinking. “We used to have a thing in fifth year.”

Harry snorted. “With  _Flint?”_

“You don’t seem to approve of anybody I date,” Malfoy sighed, leaning back and crossing his legs. “Not that I need your approval.”

“Yeah, well, they’re all annoying,” Harry muttered, and Malfoy rolled his eyes. They were set aglow by the streetlights, less grey than usual. More alive.

“Well, Flint’s out of the picture anyways,” Malfoy snorted. “That was a one-time thing.”

“Good. He’s annoying.”

“So you’ve said,” Malfoy rolled his eyes again, something that wasn’t atypical around Harry. “What about him was annoying exactly?”

Harry opened his mouth, struggling for words. “He kept touching your shoulder and — and —”

Malfoy raised one eyebrow in that infuriating way he was always capable of. “You think he’s annoying because he kept touching my  _shoulder?_ Really, Potter?” Harry shrugged and rolled his eyes. Kicked at the snow. It was more satisfying than kicking the ground, because it sent a plume of white into the air, thrown into sharp relief with the orange lights surrounding them.

And then he felt Malfoy’s hand on his shoulder. Warm. Fingers splayed.

“Is this really annoying?” Malfoy asked, seemingly oblivious to the war that was battling inside Harry’s chest, the one that had been fighting against him for more years than he’d ever be willing to admit.

But when Harry opened his mouth and the only thing that came out was a squeak, breath hitched in his throat, Malfoy looked over at him with wide eyes as though a sudden realization had hit him.

“Hold on a second,” he said slowly, drawing his hand back. He stared at Harry, who could feel the blush spreading over his face, who knew that something was about to break and that there wasn’t much he could do to stop it. “Hold  _on.”_

Harry stared at the snow. He stared at the shadows that looked more blue than black, stared at the rise and fall in the tiny hills of snow. He stared at the rounded peaks and sloping sides and tried to ignore everything else in the world.

“Potter,” Malfoy said, his drawl even slower now and Harry could feel the eyes on him in his periphery.

“What?”

“You — are you  _jealous?”_

Harry was tired. He was so exhausted that even the cold couldn’t snap him out of it. He couldn’t think of consequences, couldn’t think of past years that he’d spent watching Malfoy and wishing. All he could do was pull his legs up to his chest and hide his face in the dip of his knees, eyes closing. Not answering was as good as confirmation and he knew it, but he couldn’t be arsed to take it back.

“Why?” Malfoy asked, and Harry turned his head, looking at Malfoy in a way that very clearly said  _you already know why._

Instead, he said, “You’re an idiot.”

“You aren’t even gay,” Malfoy said disbelievingly, and Harry let his feet fall to the ground — the bench had been to slippery under his heels, and he didn’t have enough energy left to keep them there.

“Mmm,” Harry said, closing his eyes again. “Doesn’t mean I can’t fancy blokes.”

“So you’re attracted to men,” Malfoy said carefully, “And you never mentioned it. Not  _once_ in five years, not even when I was having a crisis over being gay.”

Harry hesitated. “Didn’t know then. It… well. It takes me a while to be attracted to people. So. There’s only ever been one guy, really.”

“And you thought all my boyfriends were annoying because you were jealous?” Draco asked incredulously, staring at Harry as though he couldn’t quite believe the words he was saying.

“Well…” Harry trailed off and shrugged. “You know. Maybe.”

“Potter,” Malfoy said, still gaping, and his whole face was glowing with the streetlights. Harry wished it was glowing with happiness, with something more. 

It was only light.

“What?”

“There’s only ever been one guy, you said. Is it -?” Malfoy couldn’t seem to bring himself to finish the question. Maybe he didn’t want to assume. Maybe it disgusted him. Harry wasn’t sure.

Harry could only sigh. He was so tired, his ears were starting to freeze, and he could see the dusting of snow that was falling around them.

“Maybe,” he said again. “Yeah. Might be you.”

There was silence.

“I can find a new auror partner,” Harry said quietly when the snow continued to fall and the world continued to spin and Malfoy continued his silence. 

Malfoy didn’t appear to hear.

“Potter,” he said finally. Ever so quiet, almost more so than the muffled fall of the snow. He looked at Harry, still aglow in the light, a snowflake trapped over his eyebrow. “I’ve liked you for five years.”


End file.
